novelsite Chapter 26 Global Awakening
Chapter 26 Global Awakening
A railway worker stood nearby, his work clothes torn from his shoulder to his waist by a gaping hole caused by a gibbon.
"I've been working on railways for fifteen years. Last week, a pack of Gorgons came along the railway line and bit through 400 kilometers of rails. It wasn't sabotage, it was biting through them. Every piece of rail was the same length, three meters each, with an error of no more than ten centimeters. They measured it before they bit through it."
The worker lifted up the section of rail that had been bitten off; the cut was so clean it looked like it had been cut with a machine tool.
"They are not wild animals; wild animals don't take measurements."
……
Seoul, South Korea.
Tens of thousands of people gathered at the entrance of the royal palace.
In the center of the crowd were the bronze lion pedestals that had been dismantled by the upright apes.
The copper plates on the base were removed, the copper nails were taken out, and the supporting iron frame was dismantled into individual iron bars, on which were engraved the serial numbers of the inventions made by the upright ape himself.
An old coppersmith squatted beside the base, holding the numbered iron bar in his hand, his hands trembling.
"I've been making bronzeware for forty years. This base was made by my master's master and has been passed down for a hundred years." The old bronzesmith held up the iron bar.
"When they dismantled it, they numbered each iron bar, not randomly, but in sequence. Bar number one connected to bar number two, bar number two connected to bar number three, and not a single one could be wrong. They were telling me—we can not only dismantle, but also assemble. We dismantled your bronze lion because we wanted to learn. Once we've learned, we can build our own bronze lion."
Someone in the crowd shouted, "Where is President Lee?"
"At the Presidential Palace! He also wanted to see President Lu of the Winnie the Pooh Kingdom, but his ranking was too low; he even had to wait in line to make a phone call!"
……
Australia, Port Heaney.
The port is home to thousands of dockworkers and seamen.
Behind them lay the wreckage of the steamship that had been dismantled into parts by the upright apes.
The boiler was replaced by iron plates, copper pipes, and rivets.
The steam engine was transformed into a cylinder, piston, and connecting rod.
The propeller was replaced by blades and bushings.
All the parts are neatly arranged and stacked on the dock, like an industrial museum.
An old chief engineer stood beside a pile of parts, his face looking as if his soul had been ripped from his body.
"I've been on this ship for twenty years, I've touched every single screw on it," the old chief engineer said, pointing to the pile of parts.
"They took three hours to dismantle this ship. Three hours! I've trained apprentices for thirty years, and none of them could learn to dismantle this ship in three months. They did it in just three hours."
He turned around and looked at the crowd.
"They're learning—learning how we build ships, how our steam engines work, how our civilization operates. Once they've learned everything, will they still need us? Will the government hire them, and will we lose our jobs?!"
……
Delhi, India.
Countless people gathered along the banks of the Ganges.
The crowd stretched from the shore all the way into the city streets, so dense that it seemed endless.
The river water has changed color—it's no longer the yellow of mud, but a faint black.
The upright apes bathed, excreted, and gave birth in the river; their black blood dissolved in the water, flowing through thirty-seven villages and towns, and into the wells of millions of people.
An old woman squatted by the river, holding a bowl of water drawn from a well.
The water was a pale black color.
"My son drank this water," the old woman said softly.
"He started squatting by the roadside looking at things three days ago, and he would look at them for hours at a time. He wouldn't respond when you talked to him, and he wouldn't answer when you called him to eat. He just kept looking, just like those upright apes."
She put down the bowl, stood up, and looked at the densely packed upright apes on the opposite bank of the Ganges.
"They're not here to eat people, they're here to replace us."
……
The whole world has woken up.
It wasn't the kind of sudden awakening, but the kind of waking up slowly, bit by bit, from a nightmare.
On Advent Day, the front page headline of the newspapers was "Upright apes—the gentlest of the exotic visitors."
John Bull published a photo of apes in the newspaper with the caption "Our most docile new friend".
Taro Tanuki took a photo of Masa and an upright ape kneeling face to face, titled "Zen Connection".
Ivan Bear took a picture of upright apes wearing hats, saying, "They are more obedient than the hunting dogs at home."
Now these newspapers have been dug up, torn to shreds, and thrown at the entrances of government buildings by angry citizens.
The John Bull newspaper in Chongqing published an apology on its front page—not an editorial, but an apology that took up the entire page.
The title is just one sentence: We were wrong.
The first paragraph reads: "The day after Advent, this newspaper published an article titled 'The Upright Apes—The Gentlest Foreign Visitors,' accompanied by a photo of upright apes lined up in Royal Park. At the time, this newspaper considered it a sign of docility. Now we know that it was a line, a military formation."
The Kyoto-based newspaper, "Taro Tanuki News," was even more direct.
The entire front page contained only two words, printed in the largest font size in the very center: "Substitute".
The following line of small print reads: Taro Tanuki Kingdom chose the upright apes, and the upright apes chose to replace us.
The Jacques Chicken newspaper in Licheng featured a huge photograph of Prime Minister George on its front page. The photo, showing George with a cigar in his mouth pointing at the upright apes, was a screenshot from a newsreel on Advent Day.
The photo was captioned: This is the hand that points to our future.
Next to it is another photo—the giant eye of the upright ape made of stone in the square of Notre Dame Cathedral in Licheng.
The Giovanni Wolf newspaper in Rochelle used a photo of Prime Minister Vito roaring, "That's a dragon! The legendary evil dragon!"
Next to the photo is the symbol formed by upright apes in the ancient Roman Colosseum, which depicts a circle within a square.
The title is: We avoided the dragon and chose something far more terrifying.
The Seoul-based newspaper, Far East Daily, published a photo of President Lee squatting next to the bronze lion pedestal.
Li's expression in the photo looks like he's eaten three pounds of bitter melon.
Title: Our bronze lion was dismantled, and our president squatted on the ground watching.
Below is a smaller line of text: "The creature that dismantles the bronze lion was chosen by us."
The Heane Herald of Heane published a panoramic photo of steamship parts neatly stacked on the dock.
The photo took up two full pages.
The title is only one line: Three Hours.
The following is a further explanation in smaller print: It took upright apes three hours to learn how to disassemble steamships, while it took humans a hundred years to learn how to build ships.
The front page of Delhi's Indian Times features a photo of the Ganges River.
The color of the river water is not visible in black and white printing, but a line is marked in red next to the photo: The concentration of black blood in this river is 0.3%!
The first sentence of the text: Those who drank this water began to squat by the roadside like upright apes, looking at things.
These newspapers were published on the same day.
On the same day, as if by prior arrangement.
Then newspapers in 100 countries around the world reprinted it.
This includes countries that did not select Homo erectus.
When the newspapers of the powerful dragon nation reprinted the article, they added an editor's note: Our President Kerry was criticized for twenty days for choosing the water dragon beast, and now those who criticized him are lining up to apologize to him.
The front page of the newspaper in the Winner Monkey Kingdom featured a photograph of Lu Cheng squatting in the square of the Executive Government, with a water dragon beast digging a hole in front of him.
The water dragon beast is round and plump, with its large fangs pointing skyward, making it quite distinctively ugly.
The caption for the photo is "Governor and Water Dragon Beast".
(In parentheses: He made the right choice.)