Puppeteer [Interstellar]

"Eat spaceships?" Clarence couldn't help but be amazed when Lyle said this, and he was baffled. "I believe that they like to eat people. What the hell is eating spaceships?"

"Humans are not tasty!" Although Clarence could not hear or understand Heidi's voice, this did not prevent Heidi from listening to Clarence's speech. When Heidi heard Clarence talking about cannibalism, She immediately retorted loudly: "People don't taste good at all, they are not nutritious, there is little meat, but there are many bones, and the meat tastes like shit, even my little brother said it was not delicious!"

Lyle repeated Heidi's words in a funny way. Clarence listened, and Clarence stared at Heidi with strange eyes: "If people are not tasty and nutritious, why would the Zerg attack humans? And as far as I know, the Zerg Every time we arrive at a planet, we are the first to attack the creatures on the planet, eat up all the creatures, and then gnaw the planet beyond recognition until the planet disintegrates, until there is nothing to eat, and then go to the next planet.”

After all, Clarence concluded: "To put it bluntly, the Zerg eat everything, and there is no preference. Everything that can meet their needs..."

When Clarence said this, he suddenly stopped and stroked his chin thoughtfully.

"What's the matter?" Seeing his appearance, Lyle knew that he had realized something, so he asked, "What did you think of?"

"That's right, the Zerg is also a kind of creature. In essence, they are not much different from humans or creatures on various planets." Clarence said to himself, "Biological creatures eat to supplement nutrition , to take the valuable part of the food."

Lyle echoed and replied: "It is indeed true."

"If Heidi said that humans are not nutritious and not tasty, why would the Zerg eat them?" Clarence frowned, "Or we can ask the question more precisely: what exactly are the 'nutrients' that the Zerg need to ingest? thing?"

"Energy?" Lyle stared at the limp Heidi, "They need energy."

Lyle said: "Different from other planetary creatures, the Zerg can sail in the starry sky in a direct physical state, and travel in the vast galaxy in light-year units, which means that they need to get rid of the masses of various stars and planets, and escape from the planet's mass." gravitationally bound, and that requires enormous amounts of energy."

"In order to obtain these energies, they gradually formed the habit of eating everything, just to plunder the little bit of energy rich in various organic and inorganic substances."

The more Clarence thought about it, the more excited he became. He thought they had found the key to the problem, and said: "In the biological chains naturally formed on a planet, the energy held by the creatures is scattered, because most of these creatures are low-level life forms. , did not form an intelligent civilization, and then scattered all over the planet due to reasons such as migration or avoiding natural enemies."

"The Zergs eat all these creatures, collect the energy rich in them, and then eat the planet and gnaw the star core to collect more energy."

"But humans are different. Humans are an intelligent race, and we can create energy." Lyle stood by the wall of the room and knocked on the metal wall of the spaceship. "Heidi's talking about eating spaceships actually refers to eating the energy on the spaceships. Each spaceship has a huge nuclear power source, which in the eyes of the Zerg is a piece of moving fat that exudes an attractive aroma. .”

Clarence was horrified when he heard that: "Then, in the eyes of the Zerg, the humans on the spaceship are actually side dishes on the fat?"

"And it's an unpalatable side dish." Lyle smiled wryly. "The war between us and the Zerg seems complicated, but in fact it is extremely simple. It is nothing more than a struggle for energy."

"Humans didn't understand this before." Lyle said, "We didn't understand the Zerg race. When we saw them invade, we thought they were here to destroy us. The fear of the unknown forced us to take up arms and fight fiercely."

"The Zerg want to eat 'fat meat', but we ants have been standing in front of them and harassing them endlessly. The result is obvious, and we fought."

"But now, as long as we figure out what's going on, it's much easier to solve the problem."

Lyle knocked on the wall and continued: "The energy used by human spacecraft is basically the nuclear power source of nuclear reaction. This energy is clean and efficient, and the development of technology has solved the problems of nuclear energy's radiation hazards and unstable variables."

"The energy conduits are all over every corner of the spaceship, and the metal plates used to make the spaceship are also energy plates. Such a delicious and safe piece of fat floats in the universe. It's no wonder that the Zerg will come to the door."

Clarence couldn't believe it: "My God! So we only need to make a few giant nuclear batteries and send them up to feed these Zergs, and we can solve the war between humans and Zergs."

"But in the end, we spent dozens of times more resources than a few nuclear power batteries to build a space defense network, sacrificed the lives of countless soldiers and people, and even made a 'golem', which is such a conscience-stricken thing. In order to fight these bugs for 200 years and win this illusory victory?"

In the end, Clarence even felt that his world view had collapsed. He sat down on the chair in the cultivation room, and almost murmured: "I have been studying Zerg and golem for most of my life, but in the end it is like this." An ending?"

Lyle put his hand on Clarence's shoulder and motioned him to cheer up: "Don't think about it, it's useless. Human beings have just stepped out of the solar system and entered the universe. They are still in the 'novice' stage when they encounter Zerg, and they don't understand each other. , a collision is inevitable, even if time goes back and reincarnates once, the ending will still be the same.”

"We might as well think in a good direction. At least we won this time and understood the real reason why the Zerg and us had a war. The loss is not too great, and we can start again."

After all, Lyle comforted Clarence, Clarence clenched his fists and finally calmed down.

He nodded and said to Lyle: "I'll go to the power room to get a few miniature nuclear batteries and try them for Heidi to see if she can accept them. If yes, it means our guess is correct."

"Then I'll continue to find Daryl and ask him to collect pieces of the Great Queen. Even if it's worthless, I can bring it back for your research." Lyle also nodded slightly, and then left with Scar.

Things went smoothly, and under Lyle's instruction, Daryl sent a team to investigate the star field where the queen died, and collect the queen's fragments along the way.

They also besieged and suppressed the swarms that were leaderless due to the loss of the queen. Those ordinary swarms ran around like headless chickens without a queen. If they were not controlled, they would definitely cause hidden dangers.

Fortunately, Daryl has already contacted other troops, integrated all the troops that can still fight in the nearby star field, and drove and eradicated the swarms of bugs running around.

Clarence's side is also going well. He gave Heidi a few micro-nuclear batteries to eat, and Heidi... She swallowed the batteries in a few mouthfuls, crunching them in her mouth like she was eating candy. Crunch.

After eating, he babbled and howled around Clarence's arm, with an obvious purpose - hoping that Clarence would give her a few more dollars.

Clarence did not choose to spoil Heidi, and mercilessly picked her up and threw her into the biometric scanner for physical examination. Compared with the weakness just now, Heidi, who had eaten the energy, obviously recovered, and was alive and kicking in the scanner. All values ​​have been improved.

After Clarence entered Heidi's body data into the computer, and then released her from the scanner, Heidi quickly climbed onto Clarence's arm again with a "whoosh", continued to howl, and continued to ask him for help. "Candy" to eat.

"Greedy!" Clarence tapped her nose lightly, but still took out the remaining nuclear power battery from his pocket and ate it for her.

……

Lyle and Ska talked to Daryl about the weird Zerg they met on the way back. The Zerg had the same strength as the elite guards around the Queen, but it did not lose control after the Queen died, but fought to the end. one second.

"Could it be that he didn't make a contract with the Queen?" Daryl guessed after hearing this, "Maybe it's an underage Zerg who is not qualified to make a contract with the Queen for the time being, but has the ability of an adult Zerg."

Hearing what Daryl said, Lyle couldn't help turning his head to look at Scar beside him.Scar comprehended Lyle's eyes, and took the initiative to say: "It's not a minor, it's obviously an adult Zerg, with a hard and dark shell, full scales on the tail, and powerful wings. can tell."

Daryl frowned and rubbed his chin: "Then this matter is a bit strange. If the Zerg is an adult but has not made a contract with the Queen, he still faithfully carried out the Queen's order, and did not go to bed like other ordinary Zergs." What does it mean for the queen to run away after her death?"

Lyle said: "I think there are two possibilities. First, the Zerg did not make a contract with the Queen, but it is quite special, has an IQ, and is different from other ordinary Zergs, so it can survive without a contract with the Queen." , and still insist on completing the task assigned by the queen."

"Secondly, this Zerg has a contract with the Queen. It is indeed the queen's bodyguard, but the queen is not dead, so this bodyguard can maintain its sanity and continue to fight us until the last second."

Daliel looked at the monitoring screen of the spaceship, pointed to the fragments of Zerg corpses floating on the screen, and said, "But the queen was blown to pieces, the second rule cannot be established."

Lyle's face was serious, he was silent for a while, and suddenly made a guess: "What if? What if the queen of the Zerg is special, even if she is blown into tens of thousands of pieces, she can still survive, then what should I do?"

Daryl looked horrified: "That would be too scary! It's true that the Zerg's vitality is tenacious, but I don't think they can be so tenacious!"

Lai paused, as if thinking of something, he raised his eyelids and looked at Daryl: "Dalyl, do you know how my Heidi got here?"

Heidi is the little queen of the Zerg. Due to the long-term confrontation between humans and the Zerg, this embarrassing and even terrifying existence of Heidi did not have any impact on Daryl.Because of Heidi's origin, Daryl has already learned the complete story from Clarence.

When Lyle mentioned this matter, Daryl thought of a lot, and these associations made him even more horrified, and he couldn't help saying: "You mean...is it possible?"

"Those people stole Heidi when she was still an egg, but how incredible it is to steal her egg from under the eyes of the Bug Queen... Or rather, it's simply impossible done."

Lyle bit his lower lip and speculated: "However, they still completed this impossible task. How did they do it? They didn't actually remove the whole queen's egg, but they were able to remove it once in a while. In the gap between touching the egg, the most critical part of the egg was stolen... Without this part, the egg immediately became a dead egg, and Heidi was also transplanted into Alice's stomach."

"I still don't know what the 'key part' is. But if this theory is applied to us humans, what is the most critical part of us?"

Listening to Lyle's speculation, Daryl unconsciously squeezed his right hand with his left hand: "Soul? No, I'm a materialist, and I don't believe in souls, so...genes?"

"I don't know." Lyle said, "but taking Heidi as an example, no matter what the ordinary Zergs are, at least the Zerg Queens are different. They have a 'key part', as long as this part is not eliminated , they won't really die."

"Let's call this 'key part' the 'heart' for the time being." Lyle said, "The heart may be the mystery of the queen's rebirth, so... Darryl, you know what I want to say."

"I understand." Darryl didn't need Lyle to continue to explain, he began to order his subordinates, telling them to do their best to collect the Queen's fragments, the so-called 'heart' is likely to be among these fragments.