While staying on the ship, Zha met and communicated with the strange-looking doctor almost every day. It wasn't actually many days, but Zha felt it was extremely long. Almost every moment he was exposed to something completely foreign and inexplicable to his cognition.
The doctor did not explain everything to him. More often than not, Zha felt that the doctor was not even explaining to him, but just talking in a nonsensical way. It's strange to put Wanderer and the Doctor together, because even after becoming such a grotesque and deformed person, the Doctor still looks a lot like the same person he used to be. In that small room far away from the crowd, he conducted secret research that ordinary people could not imagine. Even if you don't know this, just from his daily behavior and demeanor, you can know that he is a person who has been focused on his work for a long time and has a strong willpower.
But he was happy to have Zha around, like a teacher to his students. If Zha asked him a question, he would definitely explain it. And even for those things that Zha didn't ask, he still considered telling them.
The first question Zha raised, which had nothing to do with the safety of his family, was the death and rebirth of the doctor. He performed the funeral with his own hands, and there was no doubt that the body belonged to the physician. How did the doctor appear before him with another face?
The doctor answered the question succinctly and matter-of-factly. The living body, he pointed out, is just a more complex machine. It can be replaced like any other piece of machinery. Not to mention the hands, feet and torso, even the head is not necessary. It is neither necessary nor limited to having only one. Just as one person can operate two machines at the same time, one mind can operate two bodies at the same time. There is not much difficulty in theory, but the implementation must be just right, so it must be a very sophisticated thinking, which in turn depends on its original formation process. In short, the mode of thinking is limited by the original blueprint, and people's understanding of the blueprint is still very limited, and they can only be said to be imitators who are groping.
These words were bizarre to Zha. But he understood the machine and could barely imagine what the doctor was describing. Although that may be far from the truth, he learned that doctors can replace bodies like mechanical parts. This process does not require the use of any tissue from the previous body, and can even be done over a considerable distance. The physician can also change his own appearance at will, like applying a coat of paint to a machine. Although Zha had not witnessed the process with his own eyes, he did not doubt what the doctor said because his hands and feet were now well on his body.
However, the doctor also revealed to him that this ability is not very special. In fact the leader of the Collectors, the man he murdered, could do it too. The person who was killed also had many companions and had a wealth of knowledge about body modification. If Krishna is to be seen as a real entity, it is them, and the past shaped by them.
This is another strange explanation. Zha didn’t understand why the doctor described it like this, because Krishna is a real thing, just as real as the earth under your feet or a stone. It's right above their heads. An eternal and angry darkness. It's right in front of them. Not in the past, but in the present. Any ghost may hide in it, but it can never be filled. This is what people from the past to the present have seen with their own eyes, and it is absolutely untrue.
Yes, you saw it with your own eyes. the doctor answered. That involves a larger and deeper proposition. In his hometown, it is called the "basic layer problem."
He did not explain the word again. It required three words to be connected in series. It was a strange noun that Zha had never heard of before. But that was the first time he mentioned his hometown. Zha couldn't help but seize this opportunity to ask him, because he couldn't imagine what kind of place the doctor came from.
When he raised that question, the doctor fell silent briefly, as if reminiscing about the past. Later, he briefly described the place to Zha. The description was so bizarre that even many years later Zha could still remember it exactly.
It was a place also covered in frost. The doctor told him. But the earth is lightless and dead. There are tall towers that are also dark and completely sealed. Those towers don't have any windows, because in the past, any contact with the outside could lead to the destruction of the entire crew.
Naturally, all members live within these interconnected towers. They were not born from their parents like Zha, but were imitated from the best of their predecessors. But it is not a complete imitation, but planned adjustments will be added to each individual, causing them to have deviations in their thinking and abilities. That’s both intergenerational inheritance and optimization testing.
If we understand it in the way that Zha can get used to, the doctor also pointed out that all the members living in the tower are relatives. They can be considered a large family. However, those born later do not necessarily obey those born first, and those who occupy more important positions cannot decide everything. Their scores and abilities are evaluated by the tower - itself a huge and very clever machine - combined with the judgment of the person in charge of education to determine what position each person will hold. Everyone will have at least one job, and they are all crucial and require long-term thinking and study. The heavy and monotonous labor, such as the cleaning and maintenance of buildings, the collection and extraction of resources, and the synthesis of food and other body maintenance products, are all performed by pre-set machines. Even for matters that require human supervision and judgment, they can let one mind control multiple bodies to handle work that does not require too much calculation.
There is nothing complicated about these word pairs. He could understand it, but he couldn't imagine it. In the strange life described by the doctor, there seemed to be no mention of entertainment, rest, socializing with friends, or anything not related to work. That was very similar to the doctors he knew in the past. But is that a life worth living? Zha asked confused and cautiously. If they don't have any time for enjoyment, or their own parents and children, how can they endure this endless work?
At that time, the doctor smiled silently and coldly. He never answered the question.
Let’s talk about the sky. The doctor replaced the old one with another topic. In some places, the earth is lightless, while the sky periodically alternates between light and darkness. People do not have to divide their own rest periods, but work when the sky lights up the earth and rest when the sky is dark.
But the sky in Blackstone Land is also eternally dark. The earth is lightless stone, and the sky is darkness with countless light spots. Those light spots are not enough to illuminate the ground, but they are very charming: like crystal oscillators the size of pinholes spread on a long cloth dyed black, and then smeared everywhere with powder ground from various colored gemstones. Some people living in the stone tower are not interested at all, but others like to see the sky like this.
The doctor himself is one of those people who likes to look at the sky. They will think during the time when their work is interrupted, looking for an explanation for the sky - yes, why the sky is like this needs to be explained, just like the black sky that Zha believes in, any phenomenon that has existed throughout the ages is a basic level problem. There are many ways to explain it, and without experimentation they will never know which one is correct. In order to know the answer, they put in a lot of efforts, but in the end they fell short. The consequences of failure were severe, and eventually the Physician left the Black Towers, as did everyone else who sought an explanation.
Motives also vary among those who leave. They had few leaders and no particularly close personal contacts. Some are just being pressured, others are still searching. They still believe the answer can be found, just not where the dark towers stand. But the doctor's reasons were different from those of others. He came here to seek something lost.
What kind of things? Zha asked.
He was able to describe the incident to others in detail, from beginning to end, many years later. He remembered it so vividly because he had only seen it twice in his life. Outside the collector leader's majestic spaceship, on the mirror-smooth blue earth that reflected the abyss in the sky, the doctor stood like an empty shell, tears constantly falling from his dull face. That was the last time Zha saw the doctor cry.
