Latitude was determined during the day and longitude at night.
Tang Yue sat on a small stool and tilted his head to look at Old Cat, who was walking around with the sextant not far away. The latter looked up at the sun and pulled a thin line on the protractor, carefully measuring the sun's altitude.
A subtle air current swept past Tang Yue's feet with dust. His gaze moved away from Old Cat. Behind it was the desert, and the dark red bedrock was exposed under the black soil.
There had never been a moment like this where Tang Yue understood the concept of "no man's land" so thoroughly. The three words almost hit him in the face. Mars was the largest no man's land in the human world. If you walked ten thousand kilometers north, south, west, or east, you would not meet a second person.
This was not loneliness.
This was desolation.
"Old Cat."
Tang Yue looked down at his toes. He kicked a stone around. "Do you know there's a play called Waiting for the Lump?"
"Waiting for the Lump?" Old Cat turned his head. "What's that?
Why wait for a lump? "
"It's a very absurd play. It's very famous. It's about two people sitting under a tree and waiting for something that they don't know what it is."
Tang Yue thought for a moment. "They waited and waited until the end, but what they were waiting for never came."
"That's Waiting for Godot, an absurd play written by Samuel Beckett. It has a pivotal position in the world's art history." Old Cat shook his head helplessly. "What's waiting for the Lump?"
Old Cat had more than once worried about Tang Yue's cultural literacy.
"Well, Godot is Godot."
Tang Yue felt that he and Old Cat were like two desert travelers waiting for a bus, just like Estragon and Vladimir in Waiting for Godot. They sat side by side under the stop sign at the edge of the world. On one side was the highway, and on the other was the endless desert. The stop sign said that a bus would pass by, but no one knew when the bus would arrive, what kind of bus it was, and no one even knew if the bus existed.
The bus could appear at the end of the horizon in the next second.
It was also possible that it would never appear.
Tang Yue held the envelope. They embarked on a journey with no return because of a letter whose authenticity was unclear, all for an illusory hope.
"They said that they can restore Earth to its original state …" Tang Yue asked, "But how do they do it?"
"Maybe by copying all the information on Earth."
"There will always be such intelligence in the Universe. It can perfectly record the information of every fundamental particle on Earth before replicating it in its original form."
"But doesn't that violate the most basic physics?" Tang Yue asked.
"Which one is it violating?"
"Heisenberg's uncertainty principle," Tang Yue replied. "The observer can't determine the position and speed of a fundamental particle at the same time."
"Well …" Old Cat pondered. "To be honest, this question is beyond my scope of knowledge. I don't know if the lowest level of the universe is knowable or unknowable. After the disappearance of Earth, the development of human physics has completely stagnated. But a higher level of intelligence may have gone further than human beings. They may have made greater breakthroughs and obtained the microscope used by God when he created the world."
"The microscope used by God when he created the world?"
"Some kind of method unknown to human beings that can see the secrets of the lowest level of the universe."
Old Cat shrugged. "I think it must be more advanced than a stupid and crude primitive tool like a particle accelerator."
"We might as well think more boldly. Maybe the other party is completely above our dimension?
If they have the ability to enter a higher dimension, then time is as easy as this piece of paper for them to manipulate. "
Old Cat pointed to the envelope in Tang Yue's hand. "For such a civilization, we are all stop-motion animation on a table. They can pull out a frame at will and rewrite an established fact."
"They can tamper with history?" Tang Yue shuddered.
"They may not have the concept of 'history' at all."
"I can't imagine."
"Don't imagine."
Old Cat put away the sextant. "I don't recommend you to make any assumptions about the owner of this letter. The human brain can't fabricate an object that doesn't exist in your cognition out of thin air."
Tang Yue froze for a moment.
"No matter how bizarre and weird you imagine them to be, they are still pieced together by the known elements in your brain. Think of all the monsters and alien movies you have seen. They are actually the transformation and patchwork of creatures on Earth."
Old Cat continued. "The ancients said that dragons were drawn with the head of a camel, the horns of a deer, the neck of a snake, the eyes of a turtle, the scales of a fish, the paws of a tiger, the claws of an eagle, the ears of a cow. That's the principle."
"Up to now, all the extraterrestrial intelligence that humans have imagined can't escape this rut. It doesn't matter if the extraterrestrial you imagine has four heads and eight arms, or if a stellar year is 480 days long, or if they will dance and sing around a mushroom god at the end of the year to celebrate the rise of the third moon — they are actually a reflection of human society itself," Tomcat continued.
Tang Yue opened his eyes and slowly nodded. He didn't know what to say.
Usually, he wouldn't let his imagination run wild. In Tang Yue's mind, the extraterrestrial's image was similar to that of James Cameron's "Avatar" movie series. Tall, blue skinned, riding a warhorse and making a ruckus. They would use spears and bows to fight against fighter jets.
Therefore, in Tang Yue's imagination, a blue-skinned Na 'vi would sit in the defendant's dock during a lawsuit. His body was painted with war tattoos, and he carried a bow and arrow on his back.
"That's why I feel that all works that depict another life form are boring."
"As a human, it's impossible for a creator to separate himself from human society and create an illusory civilization out of thin air. All you can do is use whatever you have at hand to piece it together and try your best to make it look odd. In the end, all of you are actually writing about yourself."
But Old Cat shattered Tang Yue's imagination.
It told Tang Yue, 'Your barren imagination is too rustic.'
"So … I'm going to fight a lawsuit against a completely unknown creature?"
"Yes."
"We're about to fight a real battle right before the battle, and you're telling me that the enemy is an unimaginable creature?
Know yourself and know your enemy, and you'll never be defeated, okay? "
Tang Yue glared. "How can we fight now? Even if we draw Mickey Mouse and get backup, we won't be able to win. We're dead."
"That might not necessarily be the case."
Old Cat stroked its whiskers.
It only had one whisker left to stroke.
"Mr. Old Cat Zhuge, do you still have a brilliant plan?" Tang Yue asked. "You must teach me how to defeat the enemy."
"Come closer." Old Cat waved its paw.
Tang Yue leaned closer.
"If even Mickey Mouse doesn't work, you can draw a Mario on the table."
Old Cat said. "Then declare to all the creatures present that the intellectual property of this cartoon image belongs to you."