Chapter 114 Fruit
[Interview excerpt: The fruit that has matured for two million years]
What is fruit?
I asked.
We don't know, we can only guess.
Lao Wang answered very straightforwardly. He was wearing a mask and had not taken it off yet. The light blue surgical mask could only barely cover half of his face. He had a pair of thick and short black eyebrows, and a pair of small eyes under the eyebrows. His dark pupils quickly scanned the surrounding environment left and right. There were still water droplets on his short hair. We were sitting by the window. Nanjing was humid and cold in winter. It was raining outside. We couldn't see the raindrops, but we could see the transparent water flow gathering on the glass. The road was deserted, and passers-by were in a hurry, with umbrellas of different colors and masks of the same color.
We met at a KFC and I ordered two Cokes and two bags of French fries.
Wang Ning took off his mask, took a big sip of ice cola, and let out a long sigh: Oh, this damn weather is so fucking humid, teacher, how long have you been in Nanjing?
It's been almost a week.
I replied.
It’s not safe to go out these days, Wang Ning curled his lips, wondering when the diagnosis might be announced.
Director Wang, let’s talk about fruits.
I brought the topic back on track.
Well... I'm just talking nonsense. It's just speculation. It hasn't been verified by experiments. It's not rigorous and I don't bear any legal responsibility. Teacher, just treat it as a story.
Wang Ning held a French fry in his mouth, and he lifted it up as he spoke.
day by day……
Lao Wang looked at me and frowned.
Tianrui.
I remind you.
Oh, yes, Teacher Tianrui, what do you think the fruit is?
I thought about it: Is it human?
Yes, but not entirely correct. You may think that the fruit refers to something like the fruit of wisdom, because humans are advanced primates and possess advanced wisdom, so humans are the fruit, the fruit that took nature millions of years to create.
Wang Ning replied.
But fruits are not completely human beings. The word "fruit" really means fruit in the literal sense, not a meaning or a metaphor. Teacher, have you ever seen crops? Harvesters harvest crops, such as wheat, rice, and cotton. When we say the fruit of crops, we mean only rice or cotton peaches, not the whole rice or cotton plant... Now, teacher, if I am a crop, then what is the fruit of the crop?
Wang Ning pointed at himself.
I looked up and down at this man who weighed over 200 kilograms, from top to bottom, and then from bottom to top, and my eyes finally stopped on his face.
That's right, right?
Wang Ning nodded his head.
It's quite simple and crude, without any twists and turns, but we thought about it for a long time. Our initial idea was similar to yours. We thought one step further and thought that the word "fruit" was a reference, a metaphor, referring to human beings, a highly intelligent creature. But later we found that the truth was simpler than we thought. In the eyes of the swordsman, we are not fruits, but crops, really crops, crops in the true sense of the word, but the crops planted in the ground are fixed, and we are movable crops.
Wang Ning straightened up and asked me:
Do you think the human body looks like crops?
I was struck by the fact that he was right.
The human body is really like a crop. It stands upright on the ground, carrying its heavy fruits at the highest point. There is no essential difference between it and rice and wheat. There are seven billion people in the world, and there are seven billion crops densely growing on the earth.
Throughout human evolution, this crop has grown straighter and straighter, and its fruit has become more and more attractive.
I stared at Wang Ning's face, and gradually Wang Ning's image changed in my eyes. He was no longer a living human being, but a fleshy plant full of protein and fat. All his actions - whether eating, studying, working or hibernating - were cultivating the fruit and providing nutrition for the huge, round fruit.
Now that the fruits are ripe, is it time to pick them?
The thought horrifies me.
I quickly took a sip of ice cola to calm myself down.
Teacher Tianrui, you don't look very good.
Wang Ning reminded me.
This fact is a bit horrifying, and I need to calm down.
I chewed a few bites of French fries and asked:
So Big Eyes, that is, the swordsman’s purpose of destroying humanity, is to headhunt?
Yes, according to the information we got later, this thing often cuts people into small pieces of 20 to 30 centimeters. We analyzed it and found that this might be a process-based harvesting operation, because people come in different shapes and sizes, but their heads are always about the same size. The crops are cut into small pieces, the fruits are collected separately, and the other parts are directly crushed like straw. The swordsmen are not weapons, they are probably agricultural harvesters.
Wang Ning said slowly.
This is a terrifying and absurd idea that it is the agricultural harvester that completely destroys humanity.
The Earth - Wang Ning pointed outside the window. It was just a big farm. As long as the crops were ripe, they would come to harvest them. After harvesting one crop, there would be another.
Next batch?
I asked.
If humans become extinct, the vacant positions will sooner or later be filled by other creatures. One day, intelligent creatures will be born on Earth again, and fruits will slowly mature, just like leeks.
Lao Wang said it casually.
Teacher, let's think further. Do you think we are the first crop to be harvested on Earth? The history of the Earth is 4.6 billion years. The first life appeared on Earth 3.6 billion years ago. A brilliant civilization may take less than 10 million years from birth to destruction.
What is the purpose of their harvesting heads?
I asked.
Maybe it's collecting wisdom? You have to ask the swordsman about this, we don't know either.
Wang Ning shook his head.
It's horrible, it's something beyond human comprehension.
I said.
Humans really cannot understand them, but they know of their existence subconsciously - just like a newborn antelope knows that a cheetah is a deadly threat. This is a memory buried in our genes. Our thoughts are produced by the brain, and the brain is a fruit... a fruit with thinking consciousness. It has the instinct of a fruit, and the instinct of a fruit is to avoid being harvested.
Wang Ning raised his hands and moved his fingers.
All our actions are directed by the brain. We can regard all the actions of the human group - both conscious and unconscious - as an effort to escape the harvest of the swordsman. As a group, human behavior is always outward-looking and expansive. We want to leave the earth, land on the moon, land on Mars, and develop outer space colonization because we know that we can't stay on the earth forever. Staying on the earth forever will lead to the ultimate demise of civilization - our brain tells us so, right?
I nodded.
But why does the brain tell us this? In fact, it itself cannot explain where this strong motivation to leave its origin comes from. Why do we think that staying on Earth forever will lead to extinction sooner or later? Why do humans always have an inner complex of traveling far away? We think it is because of humans' eternal desire to explore, eternal curiosity, and innate desire for expansion, so where does this desire come from?
They come from the collective instinct of the brains as fruits, which is also the collective subconscious that the fruits are born with. This has nothing to do with romance, but only with survival. If they do not escape from the fields, they will all be harvested one day.
Wang Ning paused and continued:
For any living creature, the purpose of striving to expand its population is to avoid being extinct by something. This is a subconscious instinct rooted in your genes. You may not know it exists, but you are definitely doing what it says.
I was dumbfounded.
This is Lao Zhao’s idea, and what he said is a bit sensational.
Wang Ning added.
Just listen to it as a story.
I rubbed my cheeks hard. I had never observed a group of humans from such a strange perspective: they were actually a group of crops, which were trying to escape from the fields under the command of the fruits.
From the moment they are born, they try to escape from here.
But if you think about it, it makes sense. If rice and wheat had legs, they would definitely scatter when the combine harvester drove into the field.
I took a big sip of Coke and swallowed it down my throat. The cold drink could cool my head down a little so that I wouldn't be caught and quarantined by the temperature-taking staff when I entered the subway station later.
So, the big-eyed creature chasing that girl was just a farm harvester picking up the last of the crop?
It's like this, Big Eyes' behavior is very strange, very strange. From a human perspective, it is a heinous criminal and a terrible monster, but from the perspective of other creatures, it is simply a good friend of nature... Where did we talk about this before?
The night you had your first video call.
I remind you.
Wang Ning nodded.
Okay, let me continue:
(End of this chapter)
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