DipNovel Chapter 48: Ape Hand Talk
Chapter 48: Ape Hand Talk
Memory is the king of the upright ape.
It's not a particular upright ape, it's memory itself.
The underground remains left by pre-civilizational hominids are activating their intergenerational memories.
Memories of our ancestors from 100,000 years ago flowed from stone walls, bronze pipes, and pottery shards, filling their intelligent minds.
Their king is not a living being, but a memory that has lasted for 100,000 years.
Kerry picked up a pebble.
"What do you want?"
The upright ape answered quickly, dropping pebbles one after another onto the stone slab.
"I want to be remembered."
"Has the previous civilization been remembered?"
The upright ape paused for a moment.
This was the first time Kerry had seen a hominid hesitate.
Its front paws hovered above the pebble for three seconds before falling.
"no."
Why?
"Because they lost."
Kerry's hands trembled slightly.
It wasn't out of fear, but because of something deeper—the upright apes admitted that their pre-civilization had lost.
Moreover, it knows that the reason for losing is that it was "not remembered".
If a species is completely forgotten, it is as if it never existed.
The pre-civilizational upright apes perished, desperately carving their memories into stones and burying them underground before their demise.
Ten thousand years later, a new generation of hominids arrived, and they read the memories of their ancestors on the rocks.
They don't want to repeat the same mistakes.
What they want is not to replace humans, but to be remembered.
Even if it replaces humanity itself, it's only to ensure that it will be remembered.
Kerry picked up a pebble.
"If humanity remembers you, will you still replace humanity?"
The upright ape stared at the line of text for a long time.
The light from the kerosene lamp flickered in the courtyard, casting its shadow on the sand and gravel of the dry landscape garden, where it overlapped with the shadows of humans.
Then it lowered its head and displayed three words.
"have no idea."
It was already dark when Kerry came out of the courtyard.
The camera operator took more than 400 photos, recording the process of each pebble falling and being lifted.
Massa stood outside the bamboo fence, holding the stack of photos in his hand, looking at them one by one.
"It says it doesn't know," Massa said in a low voice. "It's neither that it knows nor that it doesn't know, but rather... it doesn't know."
Kerry nodded: "Its intelligent brain hasn't evolved to the point where it can answer this question, or rather, it's searching for the answer itself. It says memory is their king, it says they want to be remembered, it says the previous civilization lost because it wasn't remembered. These aren't its conclusions, but rather ancestral memories it read from underground ruins; it's just showing these memories to us."
"Is it relaying a message from its ancestors?"
"It's more like it's searching for answers with us. It knows we're digging for relics underground, it knows we're looking for ways pre-civilizations fought against Homo erectus. It's searching for itself too, because its ancestors didn't win, because it wasn't just the pre-civilizations that perished. It wants to know how its ancestors lost, and we want to know how pre-civilizations fought back. We're rowing up the same river, just in different boats."
Massa looked at the upright ape in the courtyard.
It was squatting next to the stone slab, collecting the pebbles Kerry had left behind one by one, stacking them into a neat little pile.
Like organizing files.
That evening, photos of Kerry talking to the upright ape were simultaneously transmitted to all signatory countries via telegram.
When David received the photos in the fog, he was squatting in the underwater tunnel of the Taywus River dug by the Water Dragon.
He spread the photos on his lap and looked at them one by one by the light of the kerosene lamp overhead.
He paused for a long time when he saw the "Memory" picture.
"It's telling us something."
"David said to the Navy Minister standing next to him.
"Their king is memory, while we didn't even know about the existence of a previous civilization until the Water Dragon Beast dug out that stone wall. Their memories can span 100,000 years, while our memories can barely preserve even steam engine blueprints from a hundred years ago."
The Minister of the Navy did not respond.
Because it cannot be refuted.
When George received the photos in Licheng, he was in Notre Dame Square looking at the structural diagrams of the test chamber carved by the upright apes with copper plates.
He compared the photograph with the pattern on the copper plate.
The copper plate depicts the testing room, and the stones represent a dialogue.
The same species communicates with humans simultaneously using two different mediums.
"It was carved in Licheng and written in Kyoto." George put the photo down.
"How exactly are they connected? Our telegraphs need wires, our airships need coal, but they need nothing."
Vito received the photos in the Colosseum in Rome.
Before him were the two upright apes that had been exposed in the testing room, now locked in an underground chamber dug out by the water dragon beast.
He placed the photograph in front of the observation window of the chamber, and the upright apes inside simultaneously raised their heads to look at the words formed by the upright ape in Kyoto in the photograph.
Then they lowered their heads and used their front paws to draw the same words on the ground.
"memory."
Vito's back was pressed tightly against the cave wall.
Wood received the photos underground in the Waimeming Plains while looking at fossilized human handprints unearthed by the Lyosaurus.
He placed the photo next to the handprint.
The pebbles in the photo and the handprints in the fossils, separated by a ten-thousand-fold difference in time, both point in the same direction.
He placed the photo next to the handprint.
The pebbles in the photo and the handprints in the fossils, separated by a ten-thousand-fold difference in time, both point in the same direction.
King William received the photographs underground in the Black Forest.
Before him was the second mural that the water dragon had just unearthed—a complete life cycle diagram of a giant millipede, with each stage clearly depicted from larva to adult.
He placed the photo next to the mural.
The pre-civilizational hominids drew giant millipedes, while the modern hominids write "memories" in Kyoto.
Louis received the photos in the underground city of Jincheng.
Before him was the section of bronze pipe engraved with the symbol of the upright ape, which the water dragon had dug out. The symbols on the bronze pipe and the characters arranged on the stones in the photograph belonged to the same system.
All signatory countries received the same batch of photos on the same night.
Then, on the same night, all the prime ministers, presidents, and kings of the signatory countries did the same thing—they showed the photos to their country’s most senior linguists, psychologists, and biologists.
It's not about analyzing upright apes, it's about analyzing that sentence.
"So are we."
In the early hours of the morning, the sky brightened.
[Day 43 of the Alien Creatures' Arrival - Activation Notification of the Pre-Civilization Ruins.]
The excavation activity involving the Water Dragon Beast has triggered a total of 37 pre-civilization ruins underground on Blue Star. Among these, 29 are ruins of upright apes, and 8 are ruins of unknown civilizations.
[System Confirmation: The pre-existing civilization was not a single-species civilization. The pre-existing civilization on Earth was characterized by the coexistence of multiple species. These coexisting species included—Homo erectus (confirmed), humans (confirmed), and an unknown species (pending confirmation).]
The text on the screen paused for a moment.
[System notification: The reason for the destruction of the previous civilization was not the replacement by upright apes, but rather the inability to coexist.]
The light screen refreshes.
[System Update: Of the ten exotic creatures released this time, Homo erectus is one of the species that coexisted with humans during the pre-civilization period, while the other nine evolved after that period. The intergenerational memories of Homo erectus contain a complete history of coexistence with humans, and this memory is being activated.]
The light screen flickered.
[System Final Prompt: In the pre-civilization era, humans and upright apes coexisted for approximately three thousand years. During these three thousand years, they experienced contact, communication, cooperation, competition, conflict, and war. At the end of the war, both sides realized they could not coexist. The reason for this impossibility was inscribed on the last stone wall of the pre-civilization era. The stone wall is located 120 meters underground from the government building of the Winner Monkey Kingdom. The Water Dragon Beast's current excavation depth: 67 meters.]