Manhattan Reborn 1978

new York.

night~

LaGuardia Airport in northern Queens.

David stood by the car, looked at Lilith and Laura coming from behind, opened his arms to them and smiled.

"Hey~ You won't keep me waiting too long...right?"

Lilith, who specially brought Laura with her to see David off, glanced at Susan sitting in the car with a smile, walked to David and whispered softly.

"Even if we have time to find you, you don't have time, right?"

"Haha~" David smiled and rubbed his belly with his hands, and winked at Lilith. The two of them understood each other's meaning very tacitly by communicating only with their eyes.

"Little Tail" Laura, who was wearing a ponytail, saw the two people's "faithful glances" and widened her eyes in amusement, pulling Lilith's arm and said to David.

"You left all the work to Lilith and went on vacation with your pregnant girlfriend?"

"Is this you..."

"Tsk, tsk!" David heard Laura express his dissatisfaction to him in such a jealous tone, smacked his lips and smiled, took out a pen and a small notebook from his pocket, and wrote a line of words on it at random, He tore it off, folded it and handed it to Laura.

"When you are on your way back later, you can open it and take a look~"

"Trust me, all the answers you want are here!"

"...?" Laura took the note and looked into David's eyes with some confusion. Just as she was about to ask a few more questions, she heard Pine's voice from behind.

"It will take off in less than twenty minutes, so hurry up and get in~"

"Okay!" David cast a grateful look at Pine, pulled Lilith for a kiss, scraped Laura's nose with his hand, opened the car door, let Susan get out, and took her away.

. . .

Twenty minutes later.

The two left the airport and were on their way back to Manhattan.

Laura sat in the back row, took out the note left by David from her pocket, held it up in front of Lilith and joked.

"The last time a boy handed me a note was four years ago..."

"That guy is making up his mind again, you shouldn't stop me!"

"Hahaha~" Lilith smiled and put her arm around Laura's shoulders, took the note from her hand, and opened it while smiling.

"If I don't stop you, what can I do?"

"Do you want Susan to abort the child?"

"Um...I didn't think about it that way."

"So..." Lilith shrugged her shoulders and glanced at a line of words on the note. She suddenly seemed to be attracted by it and fell silent.

Laura tilted her head and glanced at Lilith in a strange way, then followed her line of sight to the note, squinted her eyes and read softly.

"The demon predicted by Laplace?"

"Determinism?"

"Yeah..." Lilith held the note between the two of them, frowned and looked at it carefully for a few seconds, then whispered.

"Pierre-Simon Marquis de Laplace of France. You studied philosophy, so you should be familiar with him, right?"

"Hmm..." Laura said as she took the note from Lilith and a large memory about Marquis Laplace emerged.

"Pierre-Simon Laplace, born in Beaumont-on-Noges, Calvados, northwest France, in 1749, was elected a member of the Académie Française in 1816,"

"He is a famous French astronomer and mathematician, a master of celestial mechanics."

"His representative works include "Theory of Universe System", "Probability Analysis Theory", "Celestial Mechanics" and so on."

Lilith listened to Laura's words with a smile, patted her arm with her hand, and continued: "Laplace once taught Napoleon and formed a deep friendship with him."

"But later Napoleon felt that this mentor who had taught him, although he was a master in mathematics, was a nobody in politics, always loyal to the side that was in power, and was often looked down upon by others."

"Determinism is a theory proposed by Laplace about the laws of motion of the world governed by causal relationships."

"Determinism basically dominated science in the 18th and 19th centuries."

"It believes that when people know the cause, they will definitely know the result~"

“Everything that happens is determined by the past and is related through cause and effect.”

"On this basis, science has developed tremendously."

"For example, the motion of celestial bodies calculated using Newtonian mechanics can accurately predict the future."

Laura held the note in her hand, leaned her head gently on Lilith, looked forward with a confused look, and whispered.

"What David wants to say to us... is everything now predestined?"

"Yeah!" Lilith nodded with firmness in her voice.

“Intuitively, it’s easy to believe that most of the decisions and thoughts we make in life are free.”

"But on the other hand, science tells us that things are determined by cause and effect, which is also a very ingrained concept."

"If you think about it carefully, you will understand that although these two concepts are in conflict with each other, there are also reasons for the occurrence of everything."

"You push the cup, and the cup becomes excited. Your pushing is the cause, and the movement of the cup is the result."

"When you are sick, the doctor will analyze the cause of your illness based on your symptoms, and then prescribe the right medicine according to the cause, so that the disease can be cured."

"So the theory of cause and effect is a deep-rooted belief that we have. We believe that everything has a reason. This is why everything happens for a reason."

"And our science today is based on the universal belief in the causal connection of everything in the world."

"We can speculate and predict each person's behavior based on his previous experiences, clues, etc."

Lilith felt that Laura in her arms seemed to be unable to control herself again, and began to think randomly. She paused for a few seconds and then changed the topic.

“The two biggest physical discoveries in science in the past century are quantum theory and relativity.”

"Max Planck proposed energy quantization, Einstein summarized the quantum theory of light, and Niels Bohr introduced the quantum state of atoms."

"French physicist Lu Yi Victor de Broglie extended the wave-particle duality proposed by Einstein to all material particles, thus kicking off quantum mechanics~"

"Subsequently, Heisenberg and other scientists proposed matrix mechanics, and Schrödinger proposed wave mechanics."

"The many theories proposed by these great scientists were finally unified and summarized into what we now know as quantum mechanics."

"Quantum mechanics describes the movement of particles in the microscopic world."

"It follows statistical laws."

"Classical physics, which studies the motion of macroscopic objects, is based on determinism and the law of causality."

"Therefore, Einstein and the Copenhagen School of Quantum Mechanics launched a fierce debate for decades over whether quantum mechanics can become an independent science and whether its theory is complete."

"So far, some basic theories of quantum mechanics are still in the slow research stage, but it can indeed solve many practical problems and laid the foundation for our current wonderful optoelectronic world."

Laura didn't seem to hear what Lilith said at all, and suddenly looked up at her and murmured.

"It was already destined that we fall in love...right?"

"Yes!" Lilith nodded vigorously and said in an extremely firm tone.

"The encounter in our lives has been destined for a long time...including life and death, wealth and poverty, high status, etc....it is all destined!"

"I also believe that everything is caused by a force beyond our control."

"Just like people believe in fatalism, they believe that everything that happens is destined, pre-arranged by God or heaven, and cannot be changed by humans."

"And this kind of power that we cannot control ourselves also makes us feel powerless at all times. It is destiny that is often mentioned by people!"

"Yeah..." Laura looked at the brighter and brighter light in Lilith's eyes, bit her lip and nodded gently, smiling.

"Do you think these words yourself? Didn't that bastard teach you?"

"Hahaha~" Lilith smiled and kissed Laura's forehead, shaking her head deliberately.

"Congratulations! You guessed it right again!"

"..." Laura rolled her eyes and was speechless. .

----

At the same time~

On a private jet bound for Los Angeles, California.

David lay down in the bedroom with Susan in his arms, dimmed the bedside lamp, and prepared to coax her to sleep for a while.

Susan, who was wearing a nightgown, crawled into David's arms like a clingy kitten, rubbed the stubble back and forth on his chin with her fingers, and asked in a low voice.

"Are you tired already? Won't you sleep with me?"

"I still have some things to do!"

David, who had not rested for thirty-six hours, rubbed his dry, bloodshot eyes, tilted his head and kissed Susan's forehead, smiling and comforting her softly.

"You need to maintain a more regular schedule now so that your child can grow up smoothly."

"I take care of everything else~"

"you do not need to worry!"

"Yeah..." Susan felt warm in her heart and nodded lightly.

"Thank you!"

"Haha~" David felt funny when he heard Susan say such polite words. He moved his body and looked at Susan face to face and said.

“Aren’t you curious about what I just wrote to Laura?”

"I'll just use it... let me tell you a bedtime story~"

"Okay~" Susan folded her arms in front of her chest, raised her head and closed her eyes, making an expression like she was listening to the story.

David put his hand on Susan's waist, narrowed his eyes slightly, and preached in a low voice.

"In ancient Greece a long time ago~"

"There was a king named Laius who gave birth to a child to his wife after being drunk."

"But after he sobered up, he thought that the child his wife gave birth to was a bad omen and an accident caused by his unwilling union, so he decided to throw away the child."

"His intention was clearly to kill this son for whom he had no name at all."

"It's just that he didn't do it himself, but abandoned the baby to an environment where it couldn't survive on its own and left it to die naturally."

"But the baby was rescued by the shepherds and named Oedipus for his injured feet."

"In the subsequent time, Oedipus, who grew up slowly, was recognized by the past and future of another country, and he was raised in the palace as his own son, preparing him to inherit the throne when he became an adult."

"But in that era of ancient Greek mythology, every heir to the king who wanted to succeed to the throne had to obtain the blessing of the temple priest."

"When Oedipus grew up, the priests of the temple said that he would commit the crime of killing his father and marrying his mother in the future according to the oracles sent down by the gods, and they firmly opposed his succession to the throne."

"As an adult, Oedipus is a brave, upright, kind-hearted young man who has the courage to take responsibility."

"He doesn't know that the king and queen who adopted him are not his biological parents."

"So after he learned the oracle, in order to avoid the tragedy of family members killing each other, he chose to leave quietly and vowed never to come back."

"And on the other side~"

"Oedipus' biological father, King Laius, committed numerous crimes due to his brutal rule, which angered Hera, the queen of the Greek god world."

"In order to punish Laius, Hera sent a sphinx to the royal city, causing the whole city to fall into extreme panic."

"After the Sphinx arrived, the people in the city were asked to solve a riddle in order to survive."

"The riddle is, what animal walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs at night?"

"King Laius, unable to answer this riddle, can only hope to find a way to defeat the Sphinx through the oracle."

"But on the way to the temple outside the city, he met Edipu who wanted the golden city, and the two had a dispute because they refused to give in."

"King Laius roughly ordered Oedipus to give way, and Oedipus became furious and fought with Laius, eventually killing him."

"At the time, he didn't know that the person he killed was his father."

"When Oedipus entered the royal city and heard the Sphinx's riddle, he immediately gave the correct answer, man!"

“Morning = infancy (crawling), noon = youth (walking), evening = old age (with crutches).”

"The Sphinx, after hearing Oedipus give the correct answer and hearing that the cruel King Laius was killed by him, felt that he had completed the task assigned by Queen Hera, so he left Empire."

"Oedipus saved the people of the royal city and was praised by the people and was elected king~"

"According to the custom of the time, he married the queen who had lost her husband, and at the same time fulfilled the oracle that he would kill his father and marry his mother."

"Oedipus married his mother and gave birth to two sons and two daughters."

"Because Oedipus unknowingly committed the crime of killing his father and marrying his mother, plague and famine came to the royal city."

"Later, disasters and plagues continued to occur in the country ruled by Oedipus. When looking for the cause of the raging disasters, King Oedipus asked the gods for instructions, wanting to know why the disasters were happening."

"Finally, Oedipus knew that he was the son of Laius after the prophet's revelation, finally fulfilling his previous unfortunate fate of killing his father and marrying his mother."

"Oedipus's mother and wife hanged themselves in shame after learning the truth."

"Oedipus, who was also filled with grief and anger, felt that he was cursed with a blade and pricked his eyes blind with a brooch, so he chose to go into self-exile."

"Before he left, he told his children that he should be burned to death in the place where his parents abandoned him."

"But one of his biological daughters, knowing full well that he was innocent, accompanied him everywhere in his wanderings and suffered, and did not return to his hometown until his death."

David saw Susan frowning slightly with her eyes closed, smiled and gently "smoothed it" with his fingers, and laughed.

"This story is called Oedipus the King. It is regarded as the highest tragic achievement of ancient Greece. It is a perfect tragedy and a model of tragedy."

"It uses a variety of interrelated plot patterns as a foreshadowing, allowing the contradictions of the drama to highlight the complex relationship between chance and necessity."

"The riddles posed by the Sphinx symbolize mankind's first self-understanding and self-exploration, opening up the philosophical era of mankind."

"At the same time, it is also a manifestation of the formation of new ethics and moral concepts in ancient Greece, expressing the painful memories of mankind's transition from barbarism to civilization."

"This tragic fate in the story makes anyone want to escape~"

"But for philosophers, the point of the entire story of Oedipus is that fate is inescapable, and all people's thoughts and actions are determined by their own choices."

"The sentence I just wrote to Laura also wanted to express this~"

"To put it simply, there will be some inevitable entanglements between fate and cause and effect in our lives!"

"So do we have free will?"

"This is a difficult problem that is still debated in philosophy, psychology, quantum physics, etc...."

"But if we analyze it from a strong fatalistic point of view, the answer is no..."

"Freewill"

"In the broadest sense, free will is people's ability to decide whether to do something based on the conditions they have."

"Having conditions is the prerequisite for making a choice."

"Decision means having the consciousness to choose. It is not a random choice. It means you have weighed and thought about the choice."

"Then free will can be understood as, when faced with a choice, we feel able to choose something else, even if the situation is the same!"

"This should be easy to understand. For example, there is an apple and a pear on the table tonight, and you chose the apple today."

"But you feel that you can also choose a pear. If you forget today's choice tomorrow, you may choose a pear tomorrow night. You feel that you can choose. This is free will."

"But the fatalistic point of view is that even if we forget today's choice tomorrow, the situation tomorrow will be different from today."

"In other words, we can't completely guarantee that today's conditions will be the same as tomorrow, unless today is tomorrow..."

"The influencing factors mentioned above are all arranged from the beginning. Because everything is arranged, the factors that affect your choice have fixed your choice. Even if you think you have the feeling of choosing something else, it will It’s the result of a series of arrangements.”

"This explanation of fatalism raises a new question."

"Does non-living things have a destiny?"

"If we can prove that non-living things have no fate, then there is a loophole in the fatalistic view, which means we have free will."

"If we have free will, then our choices are chaotic and unpredictable!"

"Then the whole fatalism will collapse, and we won't have to be so entangled. We won't be able to attribute our faults to fate, and nihilism will not arise."

"It's a pity, but there is still a theory that gives us a wake-up call."

"It's called determinism, or it can be called Laplace's Creed. It's a proposition in philosophy."

"It believes that the occurrence of every event, including human cognition, behavior, decision and action, occurs for a reason because of previous events. If there is a series of events that are destined to happen without interruption since the original universe , free will is impossible.”

“Among them, human cognition, behavior, decisions and actions all happened for a reason because of previous events. This sentence shows that determinism believes that the universe is completely dominated by the results of the law of cause and effect. After a period of time, any There is only one possible state at all.”

"To put it simply... fatalism includes determinism, and non-living things are also included in determinism."

"What we call free choice is nothing more than the inevitable result of a series of psychic events."

"So the so-called free will is often an illusion that each of us has."

“As the 18th-century French philosopher Paul Bach said, everything happening now is the result of a continuous chain of events. All human behaviors are part of the physical world and are always subject to invisible constraints of physical laws. "

"You think your mind can make free decisions, but the mind we often say comes from the brain. The brain belongs to the category of biological research. It is an objective manifestation of biological states and can be explained by the theory of physics."

“In the realm of the classical physical world, causality and determinism have been somewhere between ambiguity and truth over the past two hundred years.”

David saw the confusion and confusion in Susan's quietly opened eyes, and couldn't help but laugh.

“In a world composed of causalism and determinism, there is simply no room for the existence of free will.”

“We are all just little cogs in a machine, doing what we are destined to do.”

"So, it is fate that I love you!"

"Honey, do you understand?"

"...!?" Susan opened her mouth and blinked. Seeing the love in David's eyes, she nodded and smiled with great sweetness in her heart.

"I also believe that it is destiny that I will fall in love with you!"

"Hahaha~" David was very satisfied with the answer. He held her in his arms with a smile and hummed a lullaby with a beautiful melody in his nasal voice. .