There is no definitive census of all the intelligent species in the universe. Not only are there perennial arguments about what qualifies as intelligence, but each moment and everywhere, civilizations rise and fall, much as the stars are born and die.对于宇宙中的所有智慧物种，目前还没有明确的普查。不仅关于什么是智慧的争论一直存在，而且文明每时每刻都在兴衰，就像星星的诞生和死亡一样。

Time devours all. 时间吞噬一切。

Yet every species has its unique way of passing on its wisdom through the ages, its way of making thoughts visible, tangible, frozen for a moment like a bulwark against the irresistible tide of time.然而，每个物种都有其独特的方式来传承其智慧，让思想变得可见、有形、短暂冻结，就像抵御不可抗拒的时间浪潮的堡垒。

Everyone makes books. 每个人都出书。

***

The Allatians 阿拉提安人

It is said by some that writing is just visible speech. But we know such views are parochial.有人说，写作只是看得见的言语。但我们知道这种观点是狭隘的。

A musical people, the Allatians write by scratching their thin, hard proboscis across an impressionable surface, such as a metal tablet covered by a thin layer of wax or hardened clay. (Wealthy Allatians sometimes wear a nib made of precious metals on the tip of the nose.) The writer speaks his thoughts as he writes, causing the proboscis to vibrate up and down as it etches a groove in the surface.阿拉提安人是一个音乐民族，他们通过在易受影响的表面（例如覆盖有一层薄薄的蜡或硬化粘土的金属平板）上刮擦薄而坚硬的长鼻来书写。 （富有的阿拉提亚人有时会在鼻尖上戴上贵金属制成的笔尖。）作家一边写一边说出自己的想法，使笔尖在表面刻出凹槽时上下振动。

To read a book inscribed this way, an Allatian places his nose into the groove and drags it through. The delicate proboscis vibrates in sympathy with the waveform of the groove, and a hollow chamber in the Allatian skull magnifies the sound. In this manner, the voice of the writer is re-created.为了阅读以这种方式刻字的书，阿拉蒂安人将鼻子伸进凹槽中，然后将其拖过。精致的长鼻会随着凹槽的波形而振动，阿拉蒂亚头骨中的中空腔室会放大声音。通过这种方式，作家的声音被重新创造出来。

The Allatians believe that they have a writing system superior to all others. Unlike books written in alphabets, syllabaries, or logograms, an Allatian book captures not only words, but also the writer’s tone, voice, inflection, emphasis, intonation, rhythm. It is simultaneously a score and a recording. A speech sounds like a speech, a lament a lament, and a story re-creates perfectly the teller’s breathless excitement. For the Allatians, reading is literally hearing the voice of the past.阿拉提人相信他们拥有优于所有其他人的书写系统。与用字母、音节表或语标书写的书籍不同，阿拉提亚书籍不仅捕捉单词，还捕捉作者的语气、声音、语调、重音、语调和节奏。它同时是乐谱和录音。演讲听起来像演讲，哀叹归哀叹，故事完美地再现了讲述者令人窒息的兴奋。对于阿拉提人来说，阅读实际上就是聆听过去的声音。

But there is a cost to the beauty of the Allatian book. Because the act of reading requires physical contact with the soft, malleable surface, each time a text is read, it is also damaged and some aspects of the original irretrievably lost. Copies made of more durable materials inevitably fail to capture all the subtleties of the writer’s voice, and are thus shunned.但阿拉提亚书的美丽是有代价的。由于阅读行为需要与柔软、有延展性的表面进行物理接触，因此每次阅读文本时，文本也会受到损坏，并且原始内容的某些方面将无法挽回地丢失。由更耐用的材料制成的副本不可避免地无法捕捉作者声音的所有微妙之处，因此受到回避。

In order to preserve their literary heritage, the Allatians have to lock away their most precious manuscripts in forbidding libraries where few are granted access. Ironically, the most important and beautiful works of Allatian writers are rarely read, but are known only through interpretations made by scribes who attempt to reconstruct the original in new books after hearing the source read at special ceremonies.为了保护他们的文学遗产，阿拉提人不得不将他们最珍贵的手稿锁在禁止进入的图书馆中，而很少有人被允许进入。具有讽刺意味的是，阿拉蒂亚作家最重要、最美丽的作品很少被人阅读，而只能通过抄写员的解释而为人所知，抄写员在听过在特殊仪式上阅读的原文后，试图在新书中重建原著。

For the most influential works, hundreds, thousands of interpretations exist in circulation, and they, in turn, are interpreted and proliferate through new copies. The Allatian scholars spend much of their time debating the relative authority of competing versions, and inferring, based on the multiplicity of imperfect copies, the imagined voice of their antecedent, an ideal book uncorrupted by readers.对于最有影响力的作品，存在着成百上千种解释，而它们反过来又通过新的副本被解释和扩散。阿拉蒂亚学者花费大量时间争论竞争版本的相对权威，并根据不完美的副本的多样性，推断出其前身的想象声音，这是一本未被读者腐蚀的理想书籍。

***

The Quatzoli 夸佐利

The Quatzoli do not believe that thinking and writing are different things at all.夸佐利人并不认为思考和写作是不同的事情。

They are a race of mechanical beings. It is not known if they began as mechanical creations of another (older) species, if they are shells hosting the souls of a once-organic race, or if they evolved on their own from inert matter.他们是机械生物的种族。目前尚不清楚它们是否最初是另一个（更古老）物种的机械创造物，是否是曾经有机种族灵魂的外壳，或者是否是由惰性物质自行进化而来。

A Quatzoli’s body is made out of copper and shaped like an hourglass. Their planet, tracing out a complicated orbit between three stars, is subjected to immense tidal forces that churn and melt its metal core, radiating heat to the surface in the form of steamy geysers and lakes of lava. A Quatzoli ingests water into its bottom chamber a few times a day, where it slowly boils and turns into steam as the Quatzoli periodically dips itself into the bubbling lava lakes. The steam passes through a regulating valve—the narrow part of the hourglass—into the upper chamber, where it powers the various gears and levers that animate the mechanical creature.夸佐利的身体由铜制成，形状像沙漏。他们的行星在三颗恒星之间描绘出复杂的轨道，受到巨大的潮汐力的作用，这些潮汐力搅动并熔化其金属核心，以蒸汽间歇泉和熔岩湖的形式将热量辐射到表面。夸佐利每天几次将水吸入其底部的房间，当夸佐利定期将自己浸入冒泡的熔岩湖时，水会慢慢沸腾并变成蒸汽。蒸汽通过调节阀（沙漏的狭窄部分）进入上室，为各种齿轮和杠杆提供动力，从而驱动机械生物。

At the end of the work cycle, the steam cools and condenses against the inner surface of the upper chamber. The droplets of water flow along grooves etched into the copper until they are collected into a steady stream, and this stream then passes through a porous stone rich in carbonate minerals before being disposed of outside the body.在工作循环结束时，蒸汽冷却并在上腔室的内表面上凝结。水滴沿着蚀刻在铜上的凹槽流动，直到它们被收集成稳定的水流，然后该水流穿过富含碳酸盐矿物质的多孔石头，然后被排出体外。

This stone is the seat of the Quatzoli mind. The stone organ is filled with thousands, millions of intricate channels, forming a maze that divides the water into countless tiny, parallel flows that drip, trickle, wind around each other to represent simple values which, together, coalesce into streams of consciousness and emerge as currents of thought.这块石头是夸佐利心灵的所在地。石风琴充满了成千上万个错综复杂的通道，形成了一个迷宫，将水分成无数细小的平行流，滴落、滴流、缠绕在一起，代表简单的价值观，这些价值观一起凝聚成意识流并浮现出来。作为思想的潮流。

Over time, the pattern of water flowing through the stone changes. Older channels are worn down and disappear or become blocked and closed off—and so some memories are forgotten. New channels are created, connecting previously separated flows—an epiphany—and the departing water deposits new mineral growths at the far, youngest end of the stone, where the tentative, fragile miniature stalactites are the newest, freshest thoughts.随着时间的推移，水流过石头的模式会发生变化。较旧的通道被磨损、消失或被堵塞、封闭——因此一些记忆被遗忘。新的通道被创造出来，连接以前分开的水流——一种顿悟——离开的水在石头最远、最年轻的一端沉积了新的矿物生长，在那里，试探性的、脆弱的微型钟乳石是最新、最新鲜的想法。

When a Quatzoli parent creates a child in the forge, its final act is to gift the child with a sliver of its own stone mind, a package of received wisdom and ready thoughts that allow the child to begin its life. As the child accumulates experiences, its stone brain grows around that core, becoming ever more intricate and elaborate, until it can, in turn, divide its mind for the use of its children.当夸佐利的父母在熔炉中创造出一个孩子时，其最后的行为就是赋予孩子自己的一块石头般的心灵，一整套公认的智慧和现成的思想，让孩子能够开始自己的生活。随着孩子积累经验，它的石脑围绕着这个核心生长，变得越来越复杂和精致，直到它能够反过来将其思想划分为孩子使用。

And so the Quatzoli are themselves books. Each carries within its stone brain a written record of the accumulated wisdom of all its ancestors: the most durable thoughts that have survived millions of years of erosion. Each mind grows from a seed inherited through the millennia, and every thought leaves a mark that can be read and seen.因此，《夸佐利》本身就是书。每个石脑中都携带着所有祖先积累的智慧的书面记录：在数百万年的侵蚀中幸存下来的最持久的思想。每一个思想都源自千年传承的种子，每一个思想都留下了可以阅读和看到的印记。

Some of the more violent races of the universe, such as the Hesperoe, once delighted in extracting and collecting the stone brains of the Quatzoli. Still displayed in their museums and libraries, the stones—often labeled simply “ancient books”—no longer mean much to most visitors.宇宙中一些比较暴力的种族，比如赫斯珀罗人，曾经热衷于提取和收集夸佐利人的石脑。这些石头仍然陈列在博物馆和图书馆中，通常被简单地标记为“古书”，对大多数游客来说不再有多大意义。

Because they could separate thought from writing, the conquering races were able to leave a record that is free of blemishes and thoughts that would have made their descendants shudder.因为他们能够将思想与文字分开，征服的种族能够留下一份没有瑕疵和思想的记录，这些瑕疵和思想会让他们的后代不寒而栗。

But the stone brains remain in their glass cases, waiting for water to flow through the dry channels so that once again they can be read and live.但石脑仍留在玻璃柜中，等待水流过干涸的河道，以便它们再次被阅读和存活。

***

The Hesperoe 赫斯珀罗

The Hesperoe once wrote with strings of symbols that represented sounds in their speech, but now no longer write at all.赫斯佩罗人曾经用一串符号来书写，这些符号代表他们说话中的声音，但现在根本不再书写。

They have always had a complicated relationship with writing, the Hesperoe. Their great philosophers distrusted writing. A book, they thought, was not a living mind yet pretended to be one. It gave sententious pronouncements, made moral judgments, described purported historical facts, or told exciting stories . . . yet it could not be interrogated like a real person, could not answer its critics or justify its accounts.他们与写作、赫斯珀罗一直有着复杂的关系。他们的伟大哲学家不信任文字。他们认为，一本书并不是一个活生生的思想，但却假装是一个活生生的思想。它给出了豪言壮语，做出了道德判断，描述了所谓的历史事实，或者讲述了激动人心的故事。 。 。但它无法像真人一样受到审讯，无法回应批评者或证明其说法是正确的。

The Hesperoe wrote down their thoughts reluctantly, only when they could not trust the vagaries of memory. They far preferred to live with the transience of speech, oratory, debate.赫斯珀罗人不情愿地写下了他们的想法，只有当他们无法相信记忆的变幻无常时。他们更喜欢忍受短暂的演讲、演说和辩论。

At one time, the Hesperoe were a fierce and cruel people. As much as they delighted in debates, they loved even more the glories of war. Their philosophers justified their conquests and slaughter in the name of forward motion: War was the only way to animate the ideals embedded in the static text passed down through the ages, to ensure that they remained true, and to refine them for the future. An idea was worth keeping only if it led to victory.曾经，赫斯珀罗人是一个凶猛而残忍的民族。他们虽然喜欢辩论，但更热爱战争的荣耀。他们的哲学家以前进的名义来证明他们的征服和屠杀是正当的：战争是唯一的途径，可以使世代相传的静态文本中的理想焕发活力，确保它们保持真实，并为未来完善它们。一个想法只有带来胜利才值得保留。

When they finally discovered the secret of mind storage and mapping, the Hesperoe stopped writing altogether.当他们最终发现思维存储和映射的秘密时，赫斯珀罗人完全停止了写作。

In the moments before the deaths of great kings, generals, philosophers, their minds are harvested from the failing bodies. The paths of every charged ion, every fleeting electron, every strange and charming quark, are captured and cast in crystalline matrices. These minds are frozen forever in that moment of separation from their owners.在伟大的国王、将军、哲学家去世前的那一刻，他们的思想从衰弱的身体中被收获。每个带电离子、每个转瞬即逝的电子、每个奇怪而迷人的夸克的路径都被捕获并铸造在晶体矩阵中。这些心灵在与主人分离的那一刻被永远冻结。

At this point, the process of mapping begins. Carefully, meticulously, a team of master cartographers, assisted by numerous apprentices, trace out each of the countless minuscule tributaries, impressions, and hunches that commingle into the flow and ebb of thought, until they gather into the tidal forces, the ideas that made their originators so great.此时，映射过程开始。一群制图大师在无数学徒的协助下，小心翼翼地描绘出每一个细小的支流、印象和预感，这些支流、印象和预感混合在思想的潮起潮落中，直到它们聚集成潮汐力，这些思想构成了他们的鼻祖如此伟大。

Once the mapping is done, they begin the calculations to project the continuing trajectories of the traced out paths so as to simulate the next thought. The charting of the courses taken by the great, frozen minds into the vast, dark terra incognita of the future consumes the efforts of the most brilliant scholars of the Hesperoe. They devote the best years of their lives to it, and when they die, their minds, in turn, are charted indefinitely into the future as well.一旦映射完成，他们就开始计算以投影所描绘路径的连续轨迹，从而模拟下一个想法。赫斯珀罗最杰出的学者们付出了巨大的努力，绘制出伟大而冰冷的思想进入未来广阔、黑暗的未知领域的路线图。他们将一生中最美好的年华奉献给了这个事业，当他们去世时，他们的思想也被无限期地描绘在未来。

In this way, the great minds of the Hesperoe do not die. To converse with them, the Hesperoe only have to find the answers on the mind maps. They thus no longer have a need for books as they used to make them—which were merely dead symbols—for the wisdom of the past is always with them, still thinking, still guiding, still exploring.这样，赫斯珀罗人的伟大思想就不会消亡。要与他们交谈，赫斯珀罗人只需在思维导图中找到答案即可。因此，他们不再需要像以前那样制作书籍——它们只是死的象征——因为过去的智慧始终与他们同在，仍然在思考，仍然在指导，仍然在探索。

And as more and more of their time and resources are devoted to the simulation of ancient minds, the Hesperoe have also grown less warlike, much to the relief of their neighbors. Perhaps it is true that some books do have a civilizing influence.随着越来越多的时间和资源投入到模拟古代思想上，赫斯珀罗人也变得不那么好战了，这让他们的邻居松了口气。也许有些书确实具有文明影响力。

***

The Tull-Toks 图尔托克人

The Tull-Toks read books they did not write.塔尔托克人读的书不是他们写的。

They are creatures of energy. Ethereal, flickering patterns of shifting field potentials, the Tull-Toks are strung out among the stars like ghostly ribbons. When the starships of the other species pass through, the ships barely feel a gentle tug.他们是能量的生物。塔尔托克星像幽灵般的丝带一样，飘逸、闪烁的变化场势图案，像幽灵般挂在群星之中。当其他物种的星舰经过时，它们几乎感觉不到轻微的拉力。

The Tull-Toks claim that everything in the universe can be read. Each star is a living text, where the massive convection currents of superheated gas tell an epic drama, with the starspots serving as punctuation, the coronal loops extended figures of speech, and the flares emphatic passages that ring true in the deep silence of cold space. Each planet contains a poem, written out in the bleak, jagged, staccato rhythm of bare rocky cores or the lyrical, lingering, rich rhymes—both masculine and feminine—of swirling gas giants. And then there are the planets with life, constructed like intricate jeweled clockwork, containing a multitude of self-referential literary devices that echo and re-echo without end.图尔托克人声称宇宙中的一切都可以读取。每颗恒星都是一个活生生的文本，其中巨大的过热气体对流讲述了一场史诗般的戏剧，星点充当标点符号，日冕环延伸了修辞手法，耀斑强调了在寒冷太空的深沉寂静中真实存在的段落。 。每颗行星都包含一首诗，以裸露的岩石核心的荒凉、锯齿状、断断续续的节奏写成，或者以旋转的气态巨行星的抒情、挥之不去、丰富的韵律——既有男性的，也有女性的韵律。然后是有生命的行星，它们的构造就像复杂的宝石钟表一样，包含大量自我指涉的文学手段，永无休止地回响和再回响。

But it is the event horizon around a black hole where the Tull-Toks claim the greatest books are to be found. When a Tull-Tok is tired of browsing through the endless universal library, she drifts toward a black hole. As she accelerates toward the point of no return, the streaming gamma rays and x-rays unveil more and more of the ultimate mystery for which all the other books are but glosses. The book reveals itself to be ever more complex, more nuanced, and just as she is about to be overwhelmed by the immensity of the book she is reading, she realizes with a start that time has slowed down to standstill, and she will have eternity to read it as she falls forever towards a center that she will never reach.但塔尔托克人声称在黑洞周围的事件视界中可以找到最伟大的书籍。当图尔托克厌倦了浏览无尽的通用图书馆时，她就会漂向黑洞。当她加速走向不归路时，流动的伽马射线和 X 射线揭示了越来越多的终极奥秘，而所有其他书籍都只是注释。这本书变得更加复杂，更加细致，正当她即将被她正在阅读的这本书的浩瀚所淹没时，她猛然意识到时间已经慢了下来，停滞不前，而她将拥有永恒当她永远坠向一个她永远无法到达的中心时，读它。

Finally, a book has triumphed over time.最终，一本书战胜了时间。

Of course, no Tull-Tok has ever returned from such a journey, and many dismiss their discussion of reading black holes as pure myth. Indeed, many consider the Tull-Toks to be nothing more than illiterate frauds who rely on mysticism to disguise their ignorance.当然，塔尔-托克还没有从这样的旅程中回来，许多人认为他们关于解读黑洞的讨论纯粹是神话。事实上，许多人认为塔尔托克人不过是文盲骗子，他们依靠神秘主义来掩饰自己的无知。

Still, some continue to seek out the Tull-Toks as interpreters of the books of nature they claim to see all around us. The interpretations thus produced are numerous and conflicting, and lead to endless debates over the books’ content and—especially—authorship.尽管如此，一些人仍然继续寻找塔尔托克人作为他们声称在我们周围看到的自然书籍的解释者。由此产生的解释多种多样且相互矛盾，并导致对书籍内容，尤其是作者身份的无休止的争论。

***

The Caru’ee 卡鲁伊人

In contrast to the Tull-Toks, who read books at the grandest scale, the Caru’ee are readers and writers of the minuscule.与塔尔托克人阅读规模最大的书籍不同，卡鲁伊人是小规模的读者和作家。

Small in stature, the Caru’ee each measure no larger than the period at the end of this sentence. In their travels, they seek from others only to acquire books that have lost all meaning and could no longer be read by the descendants of the authors.卡鲁伊人身材矮小，每个人的尺寸都不大于这句话末尾的句点。在他们的旅行中，他们从别人那里寻求的只是那些已经失去了所有意义、无法再被作者的后代阅读的书籍。

Due to their unimpressive size, few races perceive the Caru’ee as threats, and they are able to obtain what they want with little trouble. For instance, at the Caru’ee’s request, the people of Earth gave them tablets and vases incised with Linear A, bundles of knotted strings called quipus, as well as an assortment of ancient magnetic discs and cubes that they no longer knew how to decipher. The Hesperoe, after they had ceased their wars of conquest, gave the Caru’ee some ancient stones that they believed to be books looted from the Quatzoli. And even the reclusive Untou, who write with fragrances and flavors, allowed them to have some old bland books whose scents were too faint to be read.由于体型不起眼，很少有种族将卡鲁伊人视为威胁，而且他们能够毫不费力地获得他们想要的东西。例如，应卡鲁伊人的要求，地球人给了他们刻有 A 字形的平板电脑和花瓶、一捆称为quipus 的打结绳，以及各种他们不再知道如何破译的古代磁盘和立方体。 。赫斯珀罗人在停止征服战争后，给了卡鲁伊人一些古老的石头，他们相信这些石头是从夸佐利人那里掠夺来的书籍。甚至连隐居的云头，用香和味来写作，也允许他们拥有一些气味淡而难以阅读的旧书。

The Caru’ee make no effort at deciphering their acquisitions. They seek only to use the old books, now devoid of meaning, as a blank space upon which to construct their sophisticated, baroque cities.卡鲁伊人并没有努力破译他们的收获。他们只想利用现在毫无意义的旧书作为空白空间，在其上建造复杂的巴洛克式城市。

The incised lines on the vases and tablets were turned into thoroughfares whose walls were packed with honeycombed rooms that elaborate on the pre-existing outlines with fractal beauty. The fibers in the knotted ropes were teased apart, re-woven and re-tied at the microscopic level, until each original knot had been turned into a Byzantine complex of thousands of smaller knots, each a kiosk suitable for a Caru’ee merchant just starting out or a warren of rooms for a young Care’ee family. The magnetic discs, on the other hand, were used as arenas of entertainment, where the young and adventurous careened across their surface during the day, delighting in the shifting push and pull of local magnetic potential. At night, the place was lit up by tiny lights that followed the flow of magnetic forces, and long-dead data illuminated the dance of thousands of young people searching for love, seeking to connect.花瓶和牌匾上的雕刻线条变成了通道，墙壁上布满了蜂窝状的房间，以分形之美阐述了预先存在的轮廓。打结的绳索中的纤维在微观层面上被梳理、重新编织和重新打结，直到每个原始结都变成了由数千个小结组成的拜占庭复合体，每个结都适合卡鲁伊商人的亭子。刚开始的时候，或者是一个年轻的护理人员家庭的拥挤的房间。另一方面，磁盘被用作娱乐场所，白天，富有冒险精神的年轻人在磁盘表面上倾斜，享受当地磁势不断变化的推拉力。到了晚上，这个地方被随着磁力流动的微小灯光照亮，早已死去的数据照亮了成千上万寻找爱情、寻求联系的年轻人的舞蹈。

Yet it is not accurate to say that the Caru’ee do no interpretation at all. When members of the species that had given these artifacts to the Caru’ee come to visit, inevitably they feel a sense of familiarity with the Caru’ee’s new construction.然而，说卡鲁伊人根本不做解释是不准确的。当向卡鲁伊人赠送这些文物的种族成员前来参观时，他们不可避免地会对卡鲁伊人的新建筑产生一种熟悉感。

For example, when representatives from Earth were given a tour of the Great Market built in a quipu, they observed—via the use of a microscope—bustling activity, thriving trade, and an incessant murmur of numbers, accounts, values, currency. One of the Earth representatives, a descendant of the people who had once knotted the string books, was astounded. Though he could not read them, he knew that the quipus had been made to keep track of accounts and numbers, to tally up taxes and ledgers.例如，当来自地球的代表参观用基普建造的大市场时，他们通过显微镜观察到熙熙攘攘的活动、蓬勃发展的贸易以及不断涌现的数字、账户、价值和货币。一位地球代表，曾经打结绳书的人们的后裔，感到震惊。虽然他看不懂它们，但他知道quipus是用来记录账目和数字、统计税收和分类帐的。

Or take the example of the Quatzoli, who found the Caru’ee repurposing one of the lost Quatzoli stone brains as a research complex. The tiny chambers and channels, where ancient, watery thoughts once flowed were now laboratories, libraries, teaching rooms, and lecture halls echoing with new ideas. The Quatzoli delegation had come to recover the mind of their ancestor, but left convinced that all was as it should be.或者以夸佐利人为例，他们发现卡鲁伊人将一个丢失的夸佐利石脑重新用作研究综合体。那些曾经流淌着古老的、水汪汪的思想的小房间和通道，现在变成了实验室、图书馆、教室和报告厅，回荡着新的思想。夸佐利代表团前来是为了恢复他们祖先的神智，但离开时却确信一切都应该是这样的。

It is as if the Caru’ee were able to perceive an echo of the past, and unconsciously, as they built upon a palimpsest of books written long ago and long forgotten, chanced to stumble upon an essence of meaning that could not be lost, no matter how much time had passed.就好像卡鲁伊人能够感知到过去的回声，并且无意识地，当他们建立在很久以前写的和早已被遗忘的书籍的重写本上时，偶然发现了一种无法丢失的意义的本质，无论过去了多少时间。

They read without knowing they are reading.他们在不知道自己正在阅读的情况下阅读。

***

Pockets of sentience glow in the cold, deep void of the universe like bubbles in a vast, dark sea. Tumbling, shifting, joining and breaking, they leave behind spiraling phosphorescent trails, each as unique as a signature, as they push and rise towards an unseen surface.一些感知能力在寒冷而深邃的宇宙虚空中闪闪发光，就像浩瀚黑暗的海洋中的气泡一样。它们翻滚、移动、连接和断裂，留下螺旋状的磷光轨迹，每条轨迹都像标志一样独特，推向看不见的表面。

Everyone makes books. 每个人都出书。

© 2012 Ken Liu © 2012 刘肯