Little Mushroom

The warning from the northern base was concise and to the point.

Polly said: "They also found out."

An Zhe looked outside.

The Highland Research Institute is located on the highest mountain, looking down, you can see the abyss at a glance.The huge fault zone is like a hideous wound on the gray-white skin of the earth, and the dense forests and swamps one after another are the plasma and pus of this wound.In the distance—the far east coast is the sea, or a huge lake. In short, it can't be seen at the end. When everything is quiet, the wind is mixed with whispers, and there is a faint sound of grand waves in the mist.

In short, it is like a monster quietly entrenched on the ground.

This is not the abyss An Zhe is familiar with, and he has experienced it before.The Abyss used to be a place of blood and plunder, and there has never been a moment of peace like this.

A black shadow appeared in the distant sky, and the black shadow grew bigger and closer, and finally stopped above the white building.

With a swish, Tang Lan folded her wings, landed directly on the corridor outside, and pushed open the laboratory door.

"I'm back, sir." After he finished speaking, he turned to Rum and asked, "Has there been any enemy attacks recently?"

Rum said: "No."

Polly Jean raised her head and looked him up and down, as if to make sure he was in good shape.If the person doing this was Lu Feng, An Zhe would feel that he was judging this person to decide whether to shoot him or let him go, but Polly's gentle gray-blue eyes looked at Tang Lan, and he was sure it was just a kind gesture. The elders were concerned about whether Tang Lan was injured outside.

Sure enough, Polly said, "Have you encountered any danger outside?"

"It's dangerous, but not injured." Tang Lan said, "I have more experience there."

Polly said, "You've always reassured me."

Tang Lan smiled, his eyes were sharp and beautiful, and he had a cold and murderous aura. An Zhe remembered that Hubbard was the best leader of the mercenary team, so his deputy team must not be idle.

Polly Jean said, "How's it going outside?"

"It's about the same as you expected." Tang Lan replied, "They are balanced."

As he spoke, he pulled out a data cable from the drawer and connected the miniature camera in his hand to the computer. Hundreds of pictures were loaded and cast on the large screen beside him.

At first glance, there is nothing in those pictures, only the indescribable and strange landscape unique to the abyss, as if they were just landscape paintings taken by curious tourists.However, if you look closely, you can't help but hold your breath.

The most conspicuous chapter is an overhead shot of a huge lake, which is frozen, and the frost-white ice freezes the brown algae, floating stumps and fallen leaves on the lake.However, just under the empty ice surface, there is a huge irregular black shadow—the back of the aquatic creature, it just stays quietly under the water, and the shadow is like a group of abstract paintings.

Just on the shore of this lake, the dead branches of the dense forest are covered with large groups of gray-red vines. The next photo is a close-up of the vines. Its appearance is as smooth as an earthworm, and there are radial star-shaped lines under the skin, densely packed The black blood vessels in his body seemed to be agitating again and again.An Zhe immediately realized that this was not an ordinary plant, and the vines in the entire jungle were the same tentacle-shaped monster.

"I only took one picture here, and it found me." Tang Lan said.

Polly took the remote control and flipped through the photos one by one.

"They have gone through a three-month period of massacre, and now all the survivors are large monsters, and the fragmentary small creatures are completely invisible." Tang Lan said, "I fought with them a few times. Sir, I am sure that I am the only one in the whole institute now. The strength is enough to escape from them. But I can't fight them head-on. Moreover, most of the monsters in the abyss are polymorphic, and I'm not sure how terrible they are now."

"I see." Polly nodded slowly, with a serious expression in his gray-blue eyes: "If genes are a kind of resource, they have already completed the integration inside the abyss. Now, the monsters have also reached the level of each other. The balance of strength has been achieved, and their IQs have also been greatly improved during the integration process, and they understand that fighting may result in mutual losses. If this guess is correct, some monsters should have begun to leave the abyss by now and hunt outside. Humans must be too One of their hunting targets, but they haven't noticed it for the time being, we have to defend against the collective attack of monsters at any time."

"That's true." Tang Lan said, "But there is one thing that is different from your guess."

Polly asked, "What did you find?"

Tang Lan controlled the computer and switched to a picture.It's hard to imagine how ugly this picture is - An Zhe doesn't have a systematic aesthetic, but he is sure that this picture can be described as "ugly" because it impacts people's senses to the greatest extent.Two dense molluscs grow on the surface of all the organs that can be described and cannot be described by human language. The tentacles that stretch out and flow with mucus touch each other. In the next picture, their tentacles are separated, and in the next picture, there are One went in the other direction.

"Six cases have been observed in the same situation. The monsters did not occupy their respective territories as you originally predicted and started a stalemate. They walked around in the abyss, tried each other, and then separated." Tang Lan's voice also became dignified and deep: "I Suspect the worst, sir. They seem to communicate—I don't know what they communicate. Whenever there is contact between them, I can feel that vibration in them grow stronger. "

He continued: "I suspect that they are sensing each other, testing each other to see if they have the genes they need."

"It's very possible." Polly said, "You are the one with the most sensitive senses in the institute when it comes to 'fluctuation'."

"Recently, my perception of it has become more and more sensitive." Tang Lan's face was slightly pale. "It's everywhere in the air, and every monster has it. Sometimes I feel that even the stones on the ground are vibrating. I'm getting more and more The harder it is to keep thinking, I shouldn't have come back so early, but I feel my own fluctuations are being integrated into them. Sir, I...my spirit is a little abnormal."

Polly held his hand, and his voice was calm: "Don't be afraid."

"In the era of the most stable biological gene sequence 100 years ago, some species were extremely sensitive to changes in the magnetic field. You happened to merge with this kind of creature." He said.

"But that's not a magnetic field. I can feel it. A magnetic field is another kind of fluctuation." Tang Lan closed his eyes, half-knelt down, and put his forehead against the back of Polly's hand. His voice was hoarse: "Sir, do you already understand What? You were not surprised when I said this."

"But you won't tell us because the truth is something we can't bear," he said, "but I really..."

His voice became rougher and hoarse as he spoke, and finally he couldn't continue.

"Don't be afraid, don't be afraid...children," Polly's right hand slowly held Tang Lan's shoulders, his voice was like a gentle and vast ocean, "I will protect you until the last moment of my life."

Tang Lan raised his head and looked directly at Polly Jean, as if making a solemn oath: "We will also protect you and the Institute to the last moment."

"I have never made a request to you, but if the day comes when the Institute ceases to exist," Polly said slowly, "I ask you not to plunge into the torrent of alien species and monsters, but to go north to protect Human Base."

Tang Lan: "But the judge will kill all alien species, and the base will never accept us."

Polly looked out into the dim twilight.

"But at the last moment, I am still willing to believe in the kindness and tolerance of human beings to the utmost." He said.

Tang Lan pulled the corners of his lips, and he looked up at Polly Jean: "That's because you have a high moral character and are upright."

Polly smiled and shook his head.

After Tang Lan left, the power reserve of the Simpson cage also reached a critical value, and the wide platform below the white building lit up with a dazzling scarlet light, and the heat wave hit us. With the high-energy field interacting with the trajectory, An Zhe almost thought that the downstairs was a raging sea of ​​flames.

The large screen in the laboratory is the terminal and console of the Simpson cage, but due to design flaws, to adjust the parameters of the Simpson cage, sometimes you have to go downstairs and manually adjust the pull rods of some precision devices.

On the big screen, the lines were still jumbled, but they weren't static. Every time Polly adjusted the parameters, the tangled lines would change from one kind of mess to another—eventually a mess.

But Polly still analyzed the lines again and again, calculated functions, adjusted parameters, changed the reception frequency.The ever-changing lines dance on the screen like this.

The sound of music interrupted An Zhe's thoughts. The old-fashioned tape recorder in the corridor played the ups and downs of "Symphony of Destiny". Rum stood by the window with a stave in front of him.He played the harmonica against the score, imitating the melody of the symphony.After some time, he stopped.

"Do you know music?" he said.

An Zhe shook his head.

Rum pointed to the tape recorder: "After listening to a song, can you know how to play it?"

An Zhe slightly increased the frequency of shaking his head.For such a complex symphony, he can appreciate the ups and downs of one ten-thousandth of it is already the limit, let alone reproduce it.

"There must be a music score." Rum turned over a page of the staff and said in a low voice.

He said "musical score", but his eyes were on the screen in the center of the laboratory.

It was as if a string of a piano was flicking gently in the void, and the chaotic and complicated thoughts were instantly clear.Suddenly, An Zhe opened his eyes slightly.

"The wave is a symphony." He said: "Mr. wants to solve its musical score. Then... Then you can do a lot of things."

Rum looked at him deeply with dark eyes, and said, "You are smarter than me."

An Zhe also looked at the screen, can the secret of the distortion disaster be analyzed from these lines?His eyes were lost.

Or maybe this never-ending chaos is already the truth in another sense.

An unspeakable silence enveloped the laboratory.An Zhe lowered his head, and the fate of human beings was as vague as that ball of lines. All of this might have nothing to do with mushrooms, but he sometimes felt hard to breathe.

It is difficult to explain why, facing the communication channel with the northern base, his fingers are on the keyboard.

The movements of his fingers are no longer flexible, just like his hyphae can no longer stretch. When he hits the keys, his fingertips will tremble uncontrollably.

Without optical fibers and base stations, the cost of communication is very high. Like the ocean telegraph communication of more than ten centuries, we must save words.

He issued.

"How's the situation at the base?"

As if by absurd coincidence, almost at the same time, the communication channel was turned on, and a similar message was sent from the northern base.

"How is the research institute?"

The northern base will give everything for the purity of human genes. They hate monsters, and the Tribunal will never tolerate alien species. It seems that only a kind scientist like Dr. Ji can tolerate the existence of fusion faction and care about the situation here.

An Zhe replied: "Everything is fine."

Whitewashing the peace seems to be a uniquely human skill, and he has learned it.

A few seconds later, the other party replied: "The base is too."

Facing the communication interface, An Zhe pondered for a long time, and then he typed slowly: "Is the judge safe?"

After thinking about it, he pressed the backspace key and deleted and edited a few more times.

Just as he was editing, the northern base sent a message.

"Has the Institute recently discovered a new mutant individual?"

An Zhe thought for a while, and replied: "Not yet."

After replying, he sent out the revised sentence.

——"Is the Inquisition safe?"

The other party replied: "The Tribunal is functioning normally."

An Zhe relaxed a little.

"Good regards." He politely sent the concluding words: "Good night."

The other party's reply was only a few words.

"Good night."

Looking at those two words, An Zhe moved his fingers away from the keyboard, and he took out the silver badge. His body was weakening faster, and it was at the last moment.The knuckles of his fingers were stiff, and he tried to hold the badge in his hand.

There was a sound of the stairs, and Polly went upstairs, but instead of going back to his room, he stood silently on the railing of the corridor, with his back turned.

An Zhe got up and pushed the door, and came to Polly.The music stopped, downstairs, the Simpson cage was burning, the night was coming, and there was a long howl from the distant dark sky.

Polly said, "Aren't you staying inside?"

An Zhe shook his head, thinking about what Tang Lan had said earlier.

"Sir." He said, "Have you understood anything?"

Polly looked at him.

"Sometimes, I think your ability to accept is higher than everyone else," Polly said, "You are very special. It seems that you are more vulnerable than everyone else, and you seem to be afraid of nothing."

An Zhe lowered his eyes slightly.

He said: "Yes."

"But I haven't got the final answer yet." Polly reached out and fastened the first row of buttons of Anzhe's coat. "Would you like to hear me tell a very simple story?"

An Zhe said, "Yes."

"It was a hypothesis of a scientist a long time ago." In the cold wind, Polly's voice was gentle.

"If today, you traveled through time and space, and came a year later. There, you traveled through time and space again, and came here a year ago." Polly said: "Then now there will be two people who are exactly the same in front of me." of you."

An Zhe thought for a while and said, "Yes."

"You know that a unit of matter is an atom, and there are electrons in an atom. There are no two identical leaves in the world, but all electrons are exactly the same. In this case, how do you distinguish two electrons as two different individuals?"

An Zhe thought for a while and said, "They are in different positions."

"But space is not a measure of position, and neither is time. These two things only make sense to four-dimensional humans. In higher dimensions, time and space are just abscissas and ordinates on a blank sheet of paper, like this " Polly took out a piece of chalk from his pocket, drew a point on the railing in front of them, and said: "An electron moves freely in time and space, the left is the back, the right is the front, and now it travels through Time, moved forward by one second."

As he spoke, his pen moved forward and drew a slanted line to the lower right, punctuating: "After traveling through time, it is here."

"Then, it traveled through time again, walked backward for a second, and stopped here." The chalk draws a line to the lower left, punctuating.

There are now three points and two lines on the railing, forming an acute angle that opens to the left, and the two points on the left are on a vertical line.Polly draws this vertical line: "Our time is at this second. What do we see at this time?"

An Zhe thought for a long time.

Finally, he said: "Two electrons."

"Yes, we saw two identical electrons. But they are actually one, but they appeared in two places at the same time." Polly clicked countless star-like electrons next to them: " An imprecise estimate, our earth has 10 identical electrons, which make up the matter we can see. How can you prove that this is not the result of the same electron repeatedly oscillating and shuttling back and forth on the time axis for billions of times? ?”

"In the same way, how do you prove that the existence of the entire universe we see is not the result of one or a few elementary particles dancing in space and time?"

An Zhe frowned, he couldn't prove it.

He struggled to digest this sentence with limited cognition.

"So me and sir are the same electron?"

Polly smiled gently. He put his arms around An Zhe's thin shoulders, like an elder hugging an innocent young child.

"This is just one of the countless conjectures that humans have about the nature of the world. It is not the truth, or it is completely different from the truth, but it is difficult for us to verify." He said, "I just cited this example to illustrate that our bodies and minds And the ephemeral existence of the will, the existence of the entire earth, in a grander measure, is smaller than an electron."

An Zhe looked into the distance. He was just a mushroom with a simple structure. He didn't have the mind of a scientist. He didn't have such a wealth of knowledge and farsighted thinking beyond dimensions. He couldn't understand such a system. He only knew that the world was truly in front of him. Said: "But we are all real."

After the words fell, the expression on his face suddenly went blank for a second, his brows furrowed, and his heart ached.

He held onto the railing tightly, his body trembling violently, spit out a mouthful of blood, and fell forward.

Polly's arms trembled. He caught An Zhe's slippery body and held him in his arms.

"Rum!" he yelled in the direction of the laboratory, his voice anxious.

An Zhe knew that Polly wanted to treat him again, or find out his cause, using temperature, antibiotics, defibrillator... those things.

He spat out another mouthful of blood, and Polly reached out and wiped it away with his sleeve.

Blood stained the white shirt sleeves red.An Zhe looked at Polly and forced a smile.

"No need." He slowly grasped Polly's arm with his fingers, panted a few times, and said softly, "... really no need."

Polly grabbed him tightly: "Hold on a little longer."

"I..." An Zhe looked into his eyes, and he seemed to see the boundless sea and sky.

He was actually fine, not yet at his weakest moment, at least he could still move and his mind was clear.

But he was going to die, either today or tomorrow—he could have died just like that.Polly is the best elder in the world. He treats him so well as a beloved child... At the end of his life, he can die with such a tender love, which is what other people in this era It's something you can't even hope for.But if he dies like this, Polly will accept that he died of illness for no reason, he can't find the cause, and he can't do anything about it.An Zhe knows that for human scientists, such unsolvable problems and unexplainable truths are the deepest frustration.

He could also die as a monster—he wasn't afraid that Polly would hate him, and what Polly had given him was enough.

"I'm sorry...I'm sorry," he looked at Polly. After making that decision, he relaxed a lot. The pain in his body was nothing. He said again, "I'm sorry, Polly."

Polly stared at him.

"I..." An Zhe smiled. He coughed a few times, and tears rolled down his face, which was exactly the same temperature as his blood.Panting with difficulty, he said to Polly: "I... lied to you, I am not a person infected by a monster. I am a monster, I am not a human, I just... just ate a person's genes, I just... look human."

Polly seemed to be stunned for a second, and the next moment, his gray-blue eyes showed more gentle sadness: "No matter what you are, just hold on, okay?"

An Zhe shook his head.

"I'm not sick." He said: "My lifespan...is only so long, what can't be changed... don't save it."

After the words fell, Polly hugged him tightly.They looked at each other and fell into a mournful silence.

The established lifespan of a species is a far more irresistible thing than disease and injury.From the moment of birth, it is doomed to end, and no one can pass that threshold, the threshold set by God—if God really exists.

In this speechless silence, the cold wind howled, and in the sound of the wind, An Zhe heard Polly say a word.

——The moment the voice fell in my ears.His heart skipped a beat.This sentence is so familiar, he is familiar with it as if he went back to the night three months ago, facing Lu Feng, the wind was also very strong that day.

Polly Jean said, "What's in that hand?"

Facing him, An Zhe had nothing to hide anymore, and he slowly opened his fingers.

In the palm of his hand lies a silver badge, which is the token of the judge's identity.

Polly's eyes fell on the badge, and An Zhe swore that he saw some kind of distant sadness in those gray-blue eyes.

Then, Polly Jean reached out, took out something from the body pocket of her jacket, and held it in her palm.

An Zhe opened his eyes slightly.

That's also a silver badge.

— almost identical badges.

"You..." An Zhe was stunned: "You are... the judge?"

"I used to be." Polly said softly: "I am a defector."

The author has something to say:

The theory is Feynman's one-electron universe hypothesis.

non-textual worldview.