ethereal wings

desert

Wasteland

People who like to be alone are like living in a small transparent box.When another person enters the box, things get awkward; if the person who enters also happens to be someone who likes to be alone, then things get awkward.Apparently this is what happened to the main French pavilion in 1762.

(Apparent age) Descartes, 43, and Pascal, 39, are sitting at a table having lunch, no, breakfast.Although it is already noon, for two people who like to get up late, this is just the beginning of the day.The dinner table was too quiet. Obviously, if two people who could only see each other twice in a lifetime suddenly could see each other every day, and these two people often attacked each other in their books, such silence would be understandable.

Descartes regrets that the agile speed with which the materialized individual of the memoir moves cannot be applied to eating.He took two loaves of bread with bacon and lettuce, and took another sip of milk. "Pascal?" He thought about it and broke the awkward silence, "Do you still remember how we met?"

"Because of "On Conic Sections"..." Pascal put down the bread in his hand and looked at the table calmly, "It was 1639, I was 16 years old and you were 43 years old...you can't believe that this book was written by a 16-year-old man , I will no longer recognize any of your theories. I know that my thoughts have been published after me and you have read them here, so you should remember what I wrote in them."

"It's the 'spirit of the foot of the slope' and 'Descartes is useless and unreliable'..." Descartes said, "maybe you also remember the insults I said to you, and the reality has proved me wrong That's right... I regret it all the time... When I suppressed a young man, it was because I was so self-centered that I didn't want to believe that anyone could be as smart and knowledgeable as me. And this young man is you."

"The memory of past misfortunes constitutes new misfortunes, Mr. Descartes—although Cervantes said so in his early years, few people take warning..." Pascal buried his head in his hands for support, "I know You currently have some new hobbies to distract you from..."

"Yes, it is some exploration of the memoir's materialized individual body..." Descartes seemed to be a little energetic, but he still elaborated carefully, "Our core should be the memoir in the body, its shape and a book It’s the same, but a book must have pages... There is a page with different texture and color from the others, which is considered to record the happiest memory when we were human beings. The basis of the contract. By exchanging the pages of the two, two memoir materialized individuals can form a contract similar to marriage."

"This is something that the memoirs of the ancient Greek period have long explored," Pascal said, "but I guess: you must think that this special page works in more than one way? one person……"

"Yes, I would like to know whether this can form a contract or what kind of contract... At present, I am just exploring the theory. Only practice can finally test my conjecture." Descartes drank the milk in the glass.

"Then you can only use yourself as the experimental material, and then convince another memoir entity to do this unprecedented experiment with you..." Pascal said as he was about to stand up, "I'm going back to my room first—oh !” It may be that the long-term sitting has made his legs lack strength, or it may be his own weakness and disease, the dizzy Pascal could not help but subconsciously hold on to the chair, but the chair slid to the side.

After the vertigo ended, Pascal found that Descartes was holding him from behind, so that he did not slip and fall to the ground. "Thank you..." Pascal said weakly, obviously he hadn't recovered from the sudden loss of consciousness just now.

"This is not the first time this month, Pascal," Descartes said in a cautionary tone, "Although I am very glad that you are willing to use drugs again... But these topical medicines cannot cure the root cause... Besides, the memoir materialized entity never To some extent, they are still recirculating their human life cycle-every year around the festival they have to re-experience the pain of death as humans...Your current situation is tantamount to self-torture..."

"I understand that my pain can only be alleviated by the modification of my apparent age - and I understand that in my terminally ill condition, the apparent age must be significantly modified... But I really find it difficult to accept Restore the body of my youth, maybe I will make this decision when all the pain is unbearable." Pascal said weakly, leaning against the wall, bending his body to reduce the pain.

"If...if that day really comes..." Descartes tentatively pleaded, "I hope you can return to the body you had in 1639...give me one more chance, and give me years of regret A chance to make amends..."

Pascal raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips in an arrogant smile.Holding on to the handrail of the stairs, he moved up to the second floor step by step.

************************************************** *******

Thirteen years have passed since that breakfast.Of course, what are these hours to the memoir-materialized individual?

Late at night in early June 1775, with candles flickering as usual, Pascal leaned on the bed with a messy roll of papers in hand.He struggled to pick up the quill, dipped some ink, and looked at the dizzy paper.

"The people of this age...the people of the 18th century, they have realized that they are undergoing a revolution, a huge change in everything from science to thought. It is easy to be confused by this rapid scientific development, Their vanity is unprecedentedly inflated, thinking that the end of nature's secrets is just around the corner. The Church has been accused in many ways, and the chess players of the Enlightenment Movement will not forget to give it another blow... Beware, this era hopes to replace God with reason Many people, when their goals are achieved, will find that they are still in confusion. Faith cannot be terminated, even if people have discovered the power of their own reason and used it in the great process of exploring nature and human beings themselves.”

Although it was June, the nausea in his stomach made him feel chills all over his body.Pascal struggled to tug the quilt onto his thin shoulders.He was so close to losing feeling in his leg that he had to move it with his hands after a while.

"However, facing the prospect of human beings returning to the scale of all things, who wouldn't be happy and complacent? I can't even imagine that I have been out of the vortex of Jan Sen's debate for so long. These years, in In the association, the development of human reason I saw was amazing, and the power of human thought was brought into full play. I talked with the outstanding people of my time about the outstanding discoveries of their time, and I was excited. But every night, I I can't help thinking of myself, this sense of common glory of human development only temporarily covers up my inherent loneliness, and my heart is still a lonely desert."

He could not help but temporarily stopped.The weakness made him extremely sensitive to pain, and a convulsion in his abdomen nearly knocked him unconscious again.Unprecedented nausea.

"I have often felt that although human beings increase in intelligence and intellectual capacity with age, the deepest things in their hearts are determined in childhood and do not change.

"I often recall the life that accompanied me for 39 years. If I could choose again, I would rather choose the pain of more diseases (he wrote here, his pen trembled a bit) than lose the love of my loved ones. My birth With my mother's death, my childhood was accompanied by my father's tyranny. When I was a teenager who needed love from others, only my eldest sister got married and my father was indifferent... I recalled how much I needed someone to take care of my sick body after my father passed away. , how much I need someone to care for my broken heart, but the family is only full of quarrels over the division of property. The PortRoyal Abbey?! Jacqueline, why did you leave me?!!!…

"The departure of the family...it was a black December... colder and longer than the polar night...

"Sometimes I even complain about my superior intelligence. The superhuman intelligence I have since I was a child just made me have no friends of the same age... The high places are extremely cold, the high and the low, and I know their meaning. My loneliness can never be softened , they gave me the sting of the soul and the destruction of the body by the disease, which made me madly seek support from religion... After I died, I had nothing but the desert of the soul, from which Follow me from birth to death, and even after death.”

The ink of the quill was dry.Pascal raised his heavy wrist and tried to reach the ink bottle on the bedside table, but suddenly his eyes were dark.

When he regained consciousness again, the ink bottle had been shattered on the ground, black ink was flowing, and his wrist was also bruised by the cabinet—this time, the healing ability of the memoir materialized entity did not seem to work.As if catching the last ray of light before the night fell, he raced against the clock to think that maybe that day had really come.

Any slight increase in pain would be the last straw.

Under the pale moonlight, the circular cathedral-like dome of the archive room exudes a cool white light.A hidden chapel, an ancient library with eerie decorations.The room is surrounded by spiral bookshelves, and volumes of obscure files are crammed inside.

Pascal walked to the center of the archive room, where an ancient Roman-style stone platform stood quietly.The quill inserted into Youlan ink on the stage drew a strange curve.Next to the quill is an hourglass, and the sand grains blink like fireflies in the moonlight.

He stepped forward and lightly touched the cold glass body of the hourglass.Like the flapping sound of a bird's wings, an old book flew out from the bookcase behind him and landed obediently on his hand.A page of parchment floated out from inside and landed right in the center of the stone platform.

This is his file.

Pascal looked at the information above that belonged to him, feeling mixed feelings in his heart... But the pain in his body was like magma that was about to erupt, agitating an ominous omen, and he couldn't bear any more delay.

He looked at the column of apparent age, which was still the default value of 39 years old.

"So if you only win twice in your life, you should still take the bet; however, if you have three lives to win, you must take the bet."

Give the man from 1639 another chance.

The pain came again, and he reluctantly picked up the pen.Cross out 39 and write 16 on it.

The hourglass suddenly turned upside down in front of him, an arc of light... But Pascal couldn't look at it, because he fainted from abdominal cramps almost as soon as he finished the correction.

☆, ablation