Chapter 43 - " That's Because You Are of Noble Character and Honest."
The early warning from the Northern Base was succinct.
Pauli said, "They've discovered it too."
An Zhe looked outside.
The Highland Research Institute lay on the top of thehighest mountain. Looking down, all of the Abyss was visible. The fault zone was like a hideous wound on the earth's pale gray skin, and the dense forests and bogs were the wound's blood, plasma, and pus. In the distance, the faraway east bank was the sea, or a huge lake. All in all, the end of it couldn't be seen, spread far beyond the horizon. During times of utter silence, whispers were mixed in with the sound of the wind, and the vast roar of the surf was faintly audible in the fog.
In short, it was like a monster silently entrenched on the ground.
This was not the Abyss that An Zhe was familiar with. He had realized this earlier as well. In the past, the Abyss was a place full of blood and pillaging. There had never been such a calm moment in it before.
A shadow appeared in the distant sky, and it became bigger and came closer before finally stopping in the sky above the white building.
With a whoosh, Tang Lan folded his wings and landed directly on the corridor outside. Then he pushed open the laboratory door.
"I've returned, sir." Then he turned to Rum. "Have there been any attacks recently?"
Rum said, "No."
Pauli Jones lifted his head and examined him from head to toe, seemingly confirming whether his condition was normal or not. If the person performing this action was Lu Feng, An Zhe would have thought that he was judging the person and deciding whether to shoot or spare them. But as Pauli's warm gray-blue eyes looked at Tang Lan, An Zhe was sure that this was only a case of a kindly elder showing concern over whether or not Tang Lan had gotten hurt outside.
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As expected, Pauli asked, "Did you run into danger outside?"
"Yes, but I didn't get hurt," Tang Lan said. "I'm quite experienced when it comes to that place."
Pauli said, "You have always allowed me to rest assured."
Tang Lan smiled. His eyes were sharp and beautiful, with a faint biting chill to them. An Zhe remembered that Hubbard was the most exceptional military team leader, sohis lieutenant was most certainly not an ordinary person either.
Pauli Jones asked, "How was it outside?"
"About the same as what you expected," Tang Lan replied. "They've reached equilibrium."
As he spoke, he pulled out a data cable from a drawer and connected the miniature camera that was in his hand to the computer. Up to a hundred photos were uploaded and tossed onto the big screen nearby.
At first glance, there was nothing in those pictures save for the indescribably strange scenes unique to the Abyss. It was like they were just landscape photos taken by noveltyseeking tourists. But upon closer look, they made people involuntarily hold their breaths.
The most eye-catching one was a photo of a massive lake that was taken from above. It had frozen over, the white ice having frozen the brown algae, floating remnants of limbs, and fallen leaves on the lake surface. However, beneath the vacant span of ice, a huge irregularly shaped shadow was visible—it was an aquatic organism's back, and it was quietly staying in the water, its shadow like an abstract painting.
Right on the shore of this lake, the jungle's withered branches were enveloped in giant clumps of dull red vines. The next photo was a close-up of a vine. Its exterior was smooth like an earthworm, and underneath its skin were star-shaped radial patterns. Crowded black blood vessels seemed to be pulsing. An Zhe immediately realized that this was no ordinary plant. All the vines in the entire jungle belonged to the same tentacle monster.
"I only took one photo here. It noticed me," Tang Lan said.
Pauli took the remote control and went through the photos one at a time.
"After three months of slaughter, the ones alive now areall large monsters, and the few remaining small creatures are nowhere to be seen," Tang Lan said. "I had a few fights with them. Sir, I'm certain that right now, out of everyone in the entire research institute, only my strength is enough to escape from them. But I'm completely unable to fight them head-on. Furthermore, the vast majority of the monsters in the Abyss are polymorphic-class, and I'm notsure exactly how terrifying they are right now."
"I understand." Pauli nodded slowly, a solemn expression in his gray-blue eyes. "Supposing genes are a type of resource, they've already finished consolidating what's in the Abyss. Now the monsters have reached an equilibriumof strength between themselves, and their intelligence has also greatly increased during the consolidation process. They understand that fighting may result in damage to both sides, threatening the whole. If this conjecture isn't wrong, there must be some monsters that have already started leaving the Abyss to hunt outside of it. Humans are certainly one of the targets of their hunts as well, but it's just that they haven't noticed for the time being. We must defend against the monsters' combined attacks at any given moment."
"It is indeed the case," Tang Lan said. "But there's one thing that differs from your conjecture."
Pauli asked, "Did you discover something?"
Controlling the computer, Tang Lan pulled up an image.
It was difficult to imagine exactly how ugly this image was —by no means did An Zhe have a frame of reference for aesthetics, but he was certain this image could be described as "ugly" because it assaulted people's senses to the greatest possible extent. On the crowded surfaces oftwo mollusks grew all of the organs that the human language could describe and the ones that couldn't be described, and they had reached out with mucus-covered tentacles to interact with the other. In the next photo, their tentacles had separated, and in the photo after that, one of the two had gone off in another direction.
"I've observed six cases of similar situations. Unlike your initial prediction, the monsters have not been each occupying their own territories and refusing to budge. They've been moving around in the Abyss, feeling each other out, and then separating." Tang Lan's tone became solemn and grim. "I suspect that the worst has happened, sir. They seem to be communicating, but I don't know what the content of those messages are. Whenever contact occurs between them, I can feel that the waves on their bodies become stronger."
He continued, "I suspect that they are feeling each other out and probing to see whether or not the other party has the genes they need."
"It's very possible," Pauli said. "As for the 'wave,' you'reone of the ones with the most acute sense of it within the research institute."
"Lately, I've been more and more sensitive to it." Tang Lan's face was slightly pale. "It's everywhere in the air, and every monster's body has it as well. Sometimes I feel like even the rocks on the ground are vibrating. It's getting harder and harder for me to keep thinking. I wasn't supposed to come back so soon, but I felt the waves of my own body being integrated into them. Sir, my... my consciousness is a bit abnormal."
Pauli held his hand and said calmly, "Don't be afraid."
"A hundred years ago, in the age when biological gene sequences were the most stable, there were already some species that were particularly sensitive to changes in the magnetic field. You just happened to fuse with such a creature," he said.
"But it's not the magnetic field. I can feel it. The magnetic field is a different kind of wave." Tang Lan closed his eyes. Getting down on one knee, he rested his forehead against the back of Pauli's hand. His voice was hoarse as he asked, "Sir, have you already realized something? When I was talking, you weren't surprised at all."
He continued, "But you won't tell us because the truth is something we're unable to handle," he said. "But I truly..."
His voice became more broken and hoarse the more he spoke, and in the end he could not continue.
"Don't be afraid, don't be afraid... child," Pauli said in a voice that was like a gentle and vast ocean as he slowly clasped Tang Lan's shoulder with his right hand, "I will protect all of you up until my final moment."
Tang Lan lifted his head and looked straight at Pauli Jones. As though he were making a solemn oath, he said,
"We will also protect you and the research institute up until the final moment."
"I've never made demands of any of you, but supposing the day comes when the research institute no longer exists," Pauli said slowly, "I beg you all to not join the torrent of xenogenics and monsters, but rather to go north and protect the human base."
Tang Lan said, "But the Arbiter will shoot all xenogenics. The base won't ever accept us."
Pauli looked at the boundless twilight outside.
"But even during our final moments, I'm still willing to believe to the greatest possible extent in humankind's kindness and leniency," he said.
The corners of Tang Lan's mouth twitched, and he looked up at Pauli Jones. "That's because you are of noble character and honest."
Pauli shook his head with a fond smile.
———
After Tang Lan left, the Simpson cage's power reserves also reached a critical value. The wide platform at the bottom of the white building shone with a harsh scarlet light and radiated waves of heat. If it was not clear that this was a high-energy field produced by machines and used to capture the vibration frequencies and interaction trajectories of elementary particles, An Zhe would have thought that it was a raging sea of fire downstairs.
The large screen in the laboratory was the Simpson cage's terminal and console, but due to defects in its design, sometimes it was necessary to go downstairs and manually adjust the levers of certain precision instruments in order to adjust its parameters.
On the big screen, the lines were still a confused mess,but they were by no means unchanging. Every time Pauli adjusted the parameters, the tangled lines would change from one kind of mess to another kind of mess.
But in the end, it was still all a mess.
Just as before, Pauli repeatedly analyzed the lines,calculated the functions, adjusted the parameters, and changed the receiving frequency. Just like that, the shifting lines danced on the screen.
Music interrupted An Zhe's thoughts. In the corridor, the old-fashioned tape recorder was playing the tempestuous Symphony No. 5. Rum stood by the window, a book of sheet music propped up in front of him. He played the harmonica while facing the score, imitating the symphony's melody. After some time, he stopped.
"Do you understand music?" he asked.
An Zhe shook his head.
Rum pointed to the tape recorder. "After listening to one piece, are you able to know how to play it?"
An Zhe shook his head a little more quickly. For such a complex symphony, it was all he could do to appreciate oneten-thousandth of its rises and falls, much less reproduce it.
"You have to have a score," Rum murmured as he turned over a page of the sheet music.
But at the word "score," his gaze was directed at the screen in the middle of the laboratory.
As though a formless string had been gently plucked, his chaotic and complex thoughts instantly became clear. All of a sudden, An Zhe's eyes widened slightly.
"The wave is a symphony," he said. "Mr. Pauli wants to work out its score. Then... then it will be possible to do many things."
Rum looked at him with his deep, dark gaze. "You're smarter than me."
An Zhe looked at the screen as well. Was it possible to obtain the secrets of the distortion calamity by analyzingthese lines? His eyes had a perplexed look to them.
Or perhaps this endless chaos was the truth in another sense of the word.
A heavy silence enveloped the laboratory. An Zhe bowed his head. The fate of humankind was as vague as that wad of lines. Perhaps all of this had nothing to do with mushrooms, but sometimes he would also feel that breathing was difficult.
It was difficult to explain the reason, but as he faced the communication channel linked to the Northern Base, he placed his fingers on the keyboard.
The movements of his fingers were no longer dexterous, just like how his hyphae could no longer extend. When he tapped the keys, his fingertips trembled uncontrollably.
Without fiber optics or base stations, the cost of communicating was very high. As though he were using humankind's undersea telegraph communications fromcenturies ago, he had to be sparing with his words.
He sent it.
"How's the situation at the base?"
Like an absurd coincidence, the communication channel lit up at almost the same time. A similar message had come from the Northern Base.
"What's the status of the research institute?"
The Northern Base could sacrifice everything for the purity of human genes. They despised monsters, and the Trial Court showed it absolutely did not tolerate xenogenics. It seemed that only the kind scientist Dr. Ji tolerated the Fusion Faction's existence and cared about the status of things at the research institute.
An Zhe replied, "Everything is fine."
Pretending that all was well seemed to be a skill unique to humankind, and he had learned it.
A few seconds later, the other party replied, "Likewise with the base."
Facing the communication interface, An Zhe was deep in thought for a long time before he slowly typed, "Is the Arbiter doing well?"
After some contemplation, he pressed the backspace key and made a few revisions.
Right as he was revising his message, one came in from the Northern Base.
"Has the research institute discovered any new types of xenogenics recently?"
An Zhe thought for a moment, then replied, "Not yet." After replying, he sent the revised sentence.
"Is the Trial Court doing well?"
The other party replied, "The Trial Court is operating as normal."
An Zhe relaxed.
"Wishing you all the best." He politely sent a closing remark. "Goodnight."
The other party's reply was also only one word.
"Goodnight."
While looking at that word, An Zhe lifted his fingers from the keyboard and took out the silver badge. His body's decline was speeding up, and it had already reached its final moments. With stiff finger joints, he tried hard to hold the badge in his hand.
The sound of movement came from the stairs, for Pauli had come up. Rather than returning to the room, though, he silently stood by the corridor railing, his back toward An Zhe.
An Zhe got up and walked over to Pauli. The music stopped. Downstairs, the Simpson cage was burningfiercely, and the night washed over them. From the dark remote skies came a long howl.
Pauli asked, "You aren't going to stay inside?"
An Zhe shook his head, thinking of Tang Lan's earlier words.
"Sir," he asked, "have you already realized something?"
Pauli looked at him.
"Sometimes I feel like your capacity for acceptance is higher than that of all other people," Pauli said. "You're very special. You seem to be more fragile than anyone else, yet you also seem to be afraid of nothing."
An Zhe slowly lowered his gaze.
"Mm," he said.
"But I haven't gotten the final answer yet." Pauli reached out and buttoned the first line of buttons on An Zhe's coat.
"Would you like to hear me tell a very simple story?"
An Zhe said, "I would."
"It was a very long time ago, a scientist's imaginings." In the cold wind, Pauli's voice was warm.
"Supposing that you traveled through time today and arrived at a year from now. There, you traveled through time again and returned to one year ago, arriving here,"
Pauli said. "Then right in front of me would be two identical versions of you."
An Zhe thought for a while, then said, "Mm."
"You know that matter consists of units known as atoms, and inside atoms are electrons. In this world, no two leaves are alike, but all atoms are identical. In that case, how can you tell that two electrons are two different ones?"
After thinking some more, An Zhe said, "They're in different spots."
"But space is not necessarily a metric of location, nor is time. These two things hold meaning only for fourdimensional humans. In higher dimensions, time and space are likewise just the horizontal and vertical axes on a sheetof white paper, just like this." Pauli took out a piece of chalk from his pocket and drew a dot on the railing in front of them. "An electron moves freely through time and space.
The left side is backward, the right side is forward. Now it passes through time, traveling forward by one second."
As he spoke, he used the chalk to draw a line on the right that slanted downward and add another dot. "After passing through time, it is here."
"Then it passes through time again, going one second backward, and stops here." The chalk drew a line to the left and downward, then added another dot.
Now there were three dots and two lines on the railing.
They formed an acute angle that opened leftward, and the two dots on the left lay on a vertical line. Pauli drew the vertical line. "Our time is right here, at this second. At this time, what do we observe?"
An Zhe thought for a very long time.
In the end, he said, "Two electrons."
"Yes. We observe two identical electrons. But in essencethey are actually one, and they're just appearing in two places at the same time." Pauli added more electrons next to those two, making them resemble countless stars.
"Roughly estimating, our world has ten to the power of fifty-one identical electrons forming the matter we can observe. How can you prove that this is not the result of the same electron repeatedly oscillating and traveling back and forth millions of times on the axis of time?"
"Similarly, how can you prove that the existence of theentire observable universe is not the result of one or a few basic particles dancing through time and space?"
An Zhe frowned. He had no way of proving it, of course.
With his limited knowledge, he strenuously digested this sentence.
"So are you and I both the same electron?"
Pauli smiled warmly and wrapped an arm around An Zhe's narrow shoulders like an elder wrapping an arm around an innocent young child.
"This is but one of humankind's countless conjecturesabout the true nature of the world. It's not necessarily the truth, or perhaps it has absolutely nothing in common with the truth. It's just that it's difficult for us to verify it," he said. "I gave this example only to explain that within a greater metric, the brief existences of our bodies, minds, and wills as well as the existence of the entire world are even more insignificant than a single electron."
An Zhe looked into the distance. He was just a mushroom with a simple composition. He didn't have a scientist's mind, nor did he have such rich knowledge and insightful dimension-transcending thoughts. Unable to understand such a system, he only knew that this world was authentically displayed before his eyes. He murmured,
"But we're all real."
After he finished speaking, the expression on his facewent blank for a second. His brows furrowed as pain lanced through his lungs.
He clutched the railing, body trembling violently, and coughed up a mouthful of blood before falling forward.
With trembling arms, Pauli caught An Zhe's limp body and held him in his embrace.
"Rum!" he shouted in the direction of the laboratory, anxiety in his voice.
An Zhe knew that Pauli wanted to treat him again or search for the cause of his illness by using warmth, antibiotics, defibrillators... those sorts of things.
He coughed up another mouthful of blood, and Pauli wiped it away with his sleeve.
Blood dyed the edge of the snow-white shirt sleeve red. An Zhe looked at Pauli and forced a smile.
"There's no need." He slowly grabbed Pauli's arm, panted a few times, and said softly, "... There's really no need."
Pauli held him in an iron grip. "Hang in there a little longer."
"I..." As An Zhe looked into his eyes, he seemed to catch sight of the boundless sea and sky.
He was actually fine, for he hadn't yet reached his weakest moments. At least he could still move, and his thoughts were clear.
But he was going to die. If not today, then tomorrow—hecould die just like this. Pauli was the best elder in the world. He regarded An Zhe as a beloved child, treating him so well... At the end of his life, he could die with such a gentle love, something that the other people of this age dared not even dream of. But if he died like this, Pauli would accept his arbitrary death. Unable to find the cause of illness, he could do nothing to help. An Zhe knew that for humankind's scientists, such unsolvable problems and inexplicable truths were the most profound frustrations.
He could also die as a monster. He wasn't afraid that Pauli would abhor him. What Pauli had given him was already enough, more than enough.
"I'm sorry... I'm sorry." He looked at Pauli. After makingthat decision, he relaxed a lot. The pain in his body was nothing. He said again, "I'm sorry, Pauli."
Pauli gazed at him.
"I..." An Zhe smiled. He coughed a few times, and tears slid down, the exact same temperature as blood. Strenuously gasping for breath, he said to Pauli, "I... lied to you. I'm not a human infected by a monster. I was originally a monster. I'm not human, I just... just ate a human's genes. I just... look like a human."
Pauli seemed stunned for a second. Then a more gentle sorrow showed in his gray-blue eyes. "No matter what you are, hang in there a little longer, okay?"
An Zhe shook his head.
"I'm not sick," he said. "My lifespan... is just this long. It can't be changed... You don't need to help me anymore."
After he finished speaking, Pauli held him tight. As they looked at each other, they fell into a sorrowful silence.
Compared to illnesses or injuries, the fixed lifespan of a creature was something even more inexorable. The end was determined from the moment of birth. Nobody could step over that threshold, the threshold set by God—if God truly existed.
In the oppressive silence, the chilly wind howled, and An Zhe heard Pauli say something amidst the sound.
The moment the words reached his ears, his heart abruptly quivered. What he said was so familiar, familiar to the point where it was like he had returned to that night three months ago when he was facing Lu Feng. The wind was strong that day as well.
Pauli Jones asked, "What's that in your hand?"
Facing him, An Zhe had nothing else to hide. He slowly uncurled his fingers.
A silver badge lay quietly in his hand. This was the token that proved the Arbiter's identity.
Pauli's gaze landed on the badge, and An Zhe swore that he saw in those gray-blue eyes a distant grief.
Then Pauli Jones retrieved something from his own jacket's inner pocket and held it in the palm of his hand.
An Zhe's eyes widened slightly.
It was also a silver badge.
A nearly identical badge.
"You..." An Zhe was stunned. "You're... an Arbiter?"
"Once upon a time," Pauli murmured. "I'm a defector."