Extra: If You Don’t Know What You Are

The thought of going on for at least thirteen days made me lose my mind... I touched a fish.

——

You know that you were born on a remote island, or in other words, it knows that you were born on a remote island.

Its name is "you", and the names of its brothers and sisters are also "you". The adult tribe who will look at it with helpless eyes are all called "you". Because that's how they communicate with their peers.

"You, no, fight."

"You guys, tie it up, Mao."

"You, ticks."

Because it only uses simple grammar, it sometimes wonders whether it is hearing "you" or a polite title using a plural pronoun to express respect. Yes, their language is differentiated by T-V - it heard the word from a cloth-covered "伱" and somehow roughly understood what it meant.

It has always been the best among the siblings at understanding sounds. What rolls in the throat and vibrates on the tip of the tongue - what comes from you, from you, from your mouth - shakes on the strings, like dewdrops shaking on the grass blades in the morning - chirping birds, soft The sound of the waves, the sound of your footsteps...

It pressed its left ear to the floor and heard the footsteps of the "you" draped in cloth. This "you" has mastered many, many words and can call others "Sir", "Ms.", "Your Excellency", "Dear" and "Dear". At the same time, when he refers to himself, he will say "Like me" That kind of people".

"people".

According to its observation, the "you" wearing a cloth will say that he is a "person", and the "dear" wearing a jingling bell will also say that he is a "person"; the long-haired "lady" is a "person" , the "sir" with the bare head on top is also a "person"; the "sir" who is so tall that he cannot squeeze into the door frame and can only talk next to its fence is a person; the "sir" who is so short that he can even sneak into its territory from under the fence "Respected" is also a human being. Once, a "man" with yellow fangs and long nails walked in, but he smelled like a down-and-out wolf.

A wolf is an animal that howls. Animals are food.

"Do you know what humans are?" it asked its adult counterparts. "Are humans animals? Are we animals?"

"You, it's you." Its kind said, "Wheel, I don't know what we are."

"It's not a wheel, it's a person." It said, and then heard the familiar footsteps of a person. "That's a human being," it said quickly.

Its companions had already called out one after another.

"Food!" they shouted, "Come here! Eat! More!"

"It's not food, we're talking about people!"

"Eat! Food! You! Us!"

Whenever they are agitated, the words become more fragmented. The rules are like torn flesh, lying in a mess in the corner.

…

When it was about six months old, another wave of younger siblings was sent over by that person. Inside it noticed a somewhat lame fellow, for that was the only one shouting "Give us food, we want to eat" while the other cubs quickly learned "Food! Ours! Eat!"

Such a sentence would lose its momentum in the battle for words, but the cub is still trying.

"We want food!" the cub howled, "We want..." He hesitated, picking at the words, "Typewriter!"

“A typewriter is not food,” it couldn’t help but say. “Food includes meat, pork, beef, mutton, chicken, sausages, and a few other things.”

The cub looked up at it in surprise, saliva dripping from its mouth.

It used its nose to push half of its sausage in front of the cub, while looking menacingly at the other cub that was jumping next to it.

"Listen carefully, I don't mind snapping the necks of one or two of my kind." It said, "You are too small and too weak. Your necks are very fragile."

"It's crispy," the cub repeated, staring at the sausage. More drool fell to the floor.

The lame cub asked, "What does 'crisp' mean?"

"It just clicks, like when people eat potato chips." It said, feeling an emotion that should probably be called "satisfaction." It's been waiting for something to talk to it. If it knows tons of words but never gets a chance to have a real "conversation," what's the point of all those shiny words?

"Crack, man, potato chips," the lame cub said thoughtfully, chewing on the sausage.

It stared at the cub. Could it be that this kind of person can only repeat simple words? It looked at the other party unwillingly, and then at the sausage that was already covered in saliva.

The lame cub swallowed a few pieces of sausage, and finally stopped to take a breath: "What do they mean? I have never heard of them."

…

"We want to call you something else."

One day, the lame cub said this to it.

They had been stuck together for three or four months, and every day they had more to say than the day before. The one who showed up most often complained that they were the two noisiest cubs, causing them to laugh secretly and get together late at night, scrambling to imitate the rich vocabulary of curse words.

"What? Why do you want to do this?" it asked.

"You're not like...the rest of you," said the lame cub. "Others of you" is a word they coined, similar to the human "they". But unlike humans, in their language, "they" refers to things other than their own kind, and all of their kind are "you."

It admits: "You are also different from the rest of you."

"We want to call you something else," the lame cub repeated stubbornly. "We know, we're going to call you Puff, because you fart loudly in your sleep."

"We never fart in our sleep!"

"You will."

It got angry: "Then we're going to call you purring, because you make purring sounds when you sleep and eat. Disgusting."

…

Since they were both dissatisfied with their new names, they still called each other "you." They only utter the words "puff" and "purr" when they are deliberately trying to annoy each other.

"What are we?" Pupu asked one day.

"You are you." Hululu said half asleep.

They sneaked out of the fence today and wanted to walk around the human nest. But they discovered that the man had a very beautiful garden, full of weeds and wild flowers, so they spent more time there than they were prepared to do. For the lame Huluhulu, this is a very physically demanding task.

"We mean us and you." Pupu said, "Our kind. What are we?"

Hulu was silent for a while.

"We don't want to think about this problem anymore." Huluhuulu said, "Our heads hurt."

"We are serious." Pupu said, "Sheep are sheep, cows are cows, what are we?"

"Why can't we be us?" Huluhulu said, "You can ask this question to all of you. All the answers will be 'we are us'."

Pupu thought hard and admitted: "What you said makes some sense. But we still want to find another word to describe 'us'. A noun that sounds good, not a pronoun."

"Typewriter." He purred, turned over, exposed his belly, and fell asleep.

…

Pupu and Snorlax grew bigger and bigger, and Snorlax's lameness became more and more obvious. That man—the one who made all the others of his kind scream "You! Food!"—also looked disapprovingly at the purring legs.

Hululu began to be fed something very unpleasant to drink, and various therapists kept appearing in front of their enclosure. But the snoring lameness did not get better.

One day, Huluhulu was taken away and never came back.

When the person came back, Pupu looked behind him. There was only an empty open space, shrouded in the shadow of trees, with golden spots of sunlight swaying in the wind.

"Where is Huluhulu?" Pupu asked, "Where did you take Huluhulu?"

Huluhulu didn't rush over in anger and limp when he heard the name like before, knocking it to the ground. And humans don't understand its language, so its questions go unanswered.

"Food! You! More!" his peers shouted, swarming to the fence.

Pupu roared with words like his other companions: "You! Where! Hulu, hulu! Where!"

It was answered with two cows, a basket of chicken and half a basket of sausages.

…

Without Hulu, the name Puff has lost its meaning. It picked up the pronoun "you" again, lay down in the corner, and issued a threatening warning to the human who caused Huluhulu to disappear.

After you embedded your teeth into the person's calf, the person threw you to the ground while swearing with rich vocabulary, while calling loudly to the few people who were responsible for pouring the unpleasant liquid into Hulu Hulu's mouth.

"This one is scrapped too," you heard people say. "No one wants to pay a high price for a crazy animal, whether it is a magical animal or not. Find some idiot to sell it to and make some money back." As long as the price is low enough, someone will take over any waste - you should already know how to do it.”

"Yes, sir," the man said.

…

"Gee, you look good," a human said.

He used the wrong personal pronoun, you think. This offends you greatly.

You are hungry, tired, and dizzy; everything is smelly and messy, and the chaotic sounds fill your ears, making you want to bury them all in the sand.

You miss Huluhulu, want to nest together with Huluhulu, press your legs on each other's bodies, and put your heads on each other's necks; you also miss that small garden, where the sun shines on the soil for a long time in the afternoon. , exuding a dry, lazy atmosphere; bees were flying buzzingly among the flowers.

The human starts talking to you again: "You're furry."

You opened your mouths—all your mouths—and bit his hand.

To your disgust, the human being says: "Oh, be careful, sir. It's very grumpy."

"It's okay, it's okay." The human with his hand still in your mouth said, "Shh, shh, poor little guy, it's okay, you're safe."

You can't quite understand what he's saying. At this moment, a part of you suddenly realized that he was speaking English, a language without T-V distinction, and temporarily forgave him.

When he took out a small piccolo and played it, you remembered that you had heard a similar sound from a distance, a sound completely different from that of a harp or a piano. At that time, I heard nothing while snoring, but I let you stick next to me, vaguely using up the vocabulary to describe what it sounded like, and then when you woke up, I laughed at you for falling asleep when listening to music. .

"I'm going to call you Fluffy," the human said. "Fluffy, Fluffy the three-headed dog."

The typewriter snorted with heavy eyelids, fell asleep, and farted loudly.