Shadowing Practice: maybe I'm the alien - Learn English Speaking with Video

Fact 1.

This place is very beautiful and I must leave immediately.

Fact 2.

There are many strange things here and I have found nothing like me.

Overhead is a big blue open bit, let's call it the sky, and inside that are two yellow balls that go up and down.

Yesterday I stared at one of them to see what would happen and went blind for a while.

I won't do that again.

Below the big blue bit are tree things and rock things and land.

It all keeps going until it disappears into the horizon.

When I look inside myself, I have a horizon also.

Everything that is me inside just keeps going until I vanish into myself.

And the landscape in there is even more alien than this world.

Fact 3.

I have learned that I must put solid and liquid things in my mouth regularly and swallow them or I become grouchy.

They reappear from me some hours later in forms I find unpleasant.

At first, I thought the liquid waste might be useful somehow, but cleaning my face with it does not work, however.

I won't do that again.

Fact four.

It is cold at night.

Yesterday I gathered pieces of wood and rubbed them together until orange arrows came up the middle, which I will call fire.

My face was the coldest part of me, so I put it directly into the fire.

It hurt very much, and I made a sound like Jesus Christ, what the fuck?

I won't do that again.

Fact five.

I appear to be an adult, but can't be sure, since I remember nothing of who I am or what I'm doing here.

Also, So I'm wearing a one -piece garment that surely someone made.

There are large holes in it and scars underneath the holes.

Given the holes in my garment and in my memory, it is likely I had some kind of accident involving head trauma.

Also, I know a scattering of things about the stars and the universe in general, but nothing about this world, suggesting I am not from this place.

Perhaps I came here alone, or my fellow travelers died on the way.

Again, I do not recall.

Fact six.

Up the beach, inland, are dead pieces of something.

Metal, I think.

They are twisted and scorched in ways that don't look natural.

Also, there are markings on some of the metal.

The markings spell out random nouns.

Flight control, Alcubierre, memory core.

Many pieces of metal look like wings and flying parts.

Perhaps this was a vehicle.

Perhaps this was my vehicle.

Clearly it landed with a bump.

Surely I did too.

Fact 7.

I put things in my body and it changes me.

I found a bottle of something in the metal -y vehicle ruins.

It contained a clear liquid that tasted a bit like when I put my face in the fire.

I drank a bit of the liquid and began to feel silly.

I drank some more and began to feel strong.

I decided that really, I am a god of this world, if I am its only inhabitant, and did some excellent dancing to affirm this fact.

The next morning, the liquid came back out of my mouth

and I had large headache and didn't feel silly

or strong anymore i just hated myself i won't do

that again or maybe i will do

that again all the time either way i have fire for warmth

and plant life for food and the ouch water for entertainment things are comfortable oh yes and then there's the alien

fact eight something is here with me several days ago i wondered

if i might send a message to see

if there are others like me nearby lacking for a machine to do

so i took a piece of wood

and scratched out a word on the beach simply hello it

got dark i drank some more of the ouch water

and went to sleep in the morning my message was still on the beach

but next to it was an identical copy hello written in

almost exactly the same style fact nine the alien is an

idiot who are you i wrote in the sand i stayed

up late hoping to catch sight of whatever it was that might reply nothing came.

Instead, the water rose up over my message, and when the tide receded again, there sat a copy of my message, as before.

Who are you?

I don't know, I replied.

I don't know, it replied the next day.

What is this thing that cohabits the world with me?

Does it think?

Does it want?

I brought some of the wreckage from the vehicle down onto the beach and wrote in the sand, can you repair this for me?

The next day, sure enough, there was the copy of my message, and a second piece of metal.

It was not repaired.

It was the same in every way, just as broken, just as burned.

Identical.

The alien is powerful.

The alien is an idiot.

Fact 10.

A few things are coming back to me.

I believe I am a xenopsychologist, a person who studies alien minds.

I feel that I have never met an alien, but I do know a few theoretical things about them.

Life must be a product of wherever it evolved, and the conditions wherever life evolves surely determine how it ends up thinking.

For example, my species, whatever we are called, evolved on a world with limited calories.

Many things tried to eat us as we tried to eat many things.

We were both hunted and hunters.

I suppose this is what made us so clever.

If we had not been so clever, we would not have survived.

This world, however, is different.

I have found no predators, no animals.

Plant life is everywhere though.

The suns provide ample free energy.

Nothing fights for food here.

On a world where everything is available, surely there would be no instincts for desperation, no need to need, not for calories, not for knowledge.

What does that mean for the alien, whatever it is that tries to communicate with me?

Perhaps it is alone, perhaps the only thing it craves is a friend.

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I can be a friend.

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I should like a friend, too.

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Fact 11.

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There has been progress.

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I spent several days talking fruitlessly with the alien, writing on the beach and having my words copied identically, until finally I wrote, please do not imitate what I say anymore.

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A reply was there in the morning, just, okay.

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conservatively we might call this a natural conversation and

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so to my knowledge this is the first instance of meaningful

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contact with a sentient alien species ever there was only one thing left to do i spent a

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while selecting a special stick to fit such a special occasion a fountain pen of driftwood

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and then i began to scrawl the phrase every xenopsychologist learns

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at the college never expecting to actually get to use it

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i wrote as a humble ambassador of the soul system of earth i offer goodwill

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and friendship it is the highest honor to meet you the night is no longer

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so dark heart open i herein bear an invitation

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if in your wisdom and grace you

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so wish it to join with us in an interstellar union such

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that together your race

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and my race shall build a great alliance of minds across

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the stars for the betterment of conscious life everywhere forever tears

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in my eyes i watch the tide rise up over my

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words no doubt reporting them to whatever great soul it is

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that lives beneath the water by morning the tide was out again

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and a reply waited for me in the sand the first

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ever extraterrestrial interspecies diplomatic exchange the conclusion of thousands of years of philosophy physics

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and astronomy the ambitions the sacrifices how many rivers we had to cross before we found our way

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and the reply read yup yup are you shitting me are you shitting me are you shitting me

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Fact 12.

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Better to be lonely than misunderstood.

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The next day, wondering if writing was even necessary, I said aloud to the ocean, Can you hear me?

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And if you can, is there any way you can reply faster?

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Yes, the message came a few minutes later.

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I said, You know, on my worlds, we talk differently.

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I wonder if you could make yourself slightly more personable, like me.

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Yes, of course, the ocean replied.

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It would be my pleasure.

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I was amazed.

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Was this all it took?

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I must admit, I said, I'm a little lonely.

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There's nothing like me here.

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The ocean said, I'm so sorry to hear it.

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Yes, I said, do you get lonely?

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Yes, of course, the ocean agreed.

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I said, I miss people, I miss laughing, I miss belonging.

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I'm so sorry to hear it, the ocean said again.

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I asked, why are you so sorry to hear it?

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The ocean said, because that is the expected reply.

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I said, but you don't understand, do you?

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No, the ocean said, you don't get sad at all, do you?

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I said, no, the ocean said.

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I said, it's alright, you don't have to be personable anymore.

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Okay, the ocean said, and added nothing else.

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Why even talk to a mind that does not know itself?

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I won't do that again.

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Fact 13.

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That night, I watched the constellations and recognized none of them.

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Then I spotted a star passing quickly over the horizon.

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I had found a telescope in the metal ruins a few days before, and fetched it just in time to catch the moving star in the lens.

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Magnified now, it was an irregular bulbous shape.

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Unnatural.

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Man -made.

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of course you wouldn't bring the whole ship down to land

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that must have been my ride home still in orbit whichever

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direction home might be fact 14 there were others who came

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here with me i know this for certain now i was

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exploring further inland yesterday i walked on through untrammeled forests across invincible meadows

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and came upon a white shard sticking from the ground i dug for a while

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and found it was a piece of a human skeleton mottled

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maybe aged by acid rain knowing what to What I look for now, I found another skeleton a mile or so away, of the same size, also human, then a third.

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I do not remember these people, but we must have been friends at some point if we all came to this world together.

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It is a heartless thing, but I can't cry for them since I don't know them.

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I wonder if all of human history has been grieving the loss of things we do not remember.

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Fact 15.

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It's a weird profession, xenopsychology, trying to comprehend alien minds.

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The truth, though, is that we do it every day, just among our own species.

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Some terrible thing you said to me in an argument, and I did not know who or what you were in that moment.

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And then I said something terrible back, and saw in your eyes you were thinking the same of me.

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Or of a morning a week later, just watching you sleep, far off in pleasant nonsense, when I realized I had discovered the most interesting and beautiful alien there was,

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right there on the Earth.

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And I couldn't understand you then either, but I should have known I didn't have to.

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The mystery was enough, with the whole future reaching forward to welcome us like respite on a long cold road

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and a door suddenly opening and you with a warm voice within saying, come here, sit down with me.

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Everything will be joy now.

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Everything will be good.

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It is not necessary to know.

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I see that finally, too late.

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It is only necessary to discover the limits of what we can know, so that we don't lose all that we love in the fruitless struggle to understand understand those we love, when the point was never to understand them,

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but simply to dance in the mystery of each other.

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Would that I could, or should that I haven't, I have been to the far stars, I have slept beneath the alien moons, I have communed with unknowable intelligence,

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and I would forget it all in a second, every light year, for just one more Sunday morning, with you.

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Fact 16.

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The alien and I talk a little, but it's pointless.

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Either it just imitates me, or says what it thinks I would like to hear.

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It has no self, no it -ness.

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What is that like?

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And what does a thing like that think of me?

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I must seem so strange to it, all these parts battling inside myself, the savage and the cowering, the hornet and the mouse.

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I am a war on legs.

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Perhaps humans are the unusual creatures in the universe, having grown brains and selves too large, like a deer pulled over by its own antlers.

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The day is warm, and the alien simply enjoys it the night is cold and the alien simply endures it.

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I sit here and drink my ouch water, sometimes miserable, always lost, and I wish I were that empty.

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I wish I was so unaware of myself.

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Here, maybe I'm the alien.

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Fact 17.

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This expedition has been a disaster.

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First the crash of the space vehicle, then the death of my friends, and now the failure to meaningfully communicate with a creature that cannot be understood.

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There's nothing further to learn and no reason to remain.

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I can't die here yet.

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I have no means of leaving

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so I must construct them I took one of the more

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preserved human skeletons down to the beach Buried it a little and asked that my ocean friend restore it to life.

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The alien only produced another skeleton Identical of course.

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I tried another approach I spent many hours writing instructions in the sand for a new kind of person Something

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that sort of resembles me but not too closely with my brain but not too much my brain.

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Then I sat in the water and let it come up to my knees

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so as to present my biology as an example to the great ocean.

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The next morning, a man woke me, the first face I've seen on this world but my own.

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I hugged him many times, then I said, do you know what you're doing here?

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No, he said, do you?

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No, I said, but at least now that's two of us confused.

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That night, when the stars were out, I pointed to the moving star, the ship, as it passed over us.

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I said, we are going to build a rocket

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and we're going to ride it all the way up to

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that freedom above then we sang together because we wanted to

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and drank too much arch water because we felt like it

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and danced about the fire

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because we could fact 18 i have made more friends made in the literal sense written into the sand

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and then produced by the ocean men and women short

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and tall they understand what we must do by day we work constructing shelters the beginnings of a town Come evening, we dance.

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But by night, there are aliens within.

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When these Play -Doh people sleep, they twitch, reach, call out.

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Simple as they are, they have their bad dreams.

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Something is inside them, as it is me.

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A voice that does not speak directly and only shows itself in revulsions, in desires.

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The unconscious.

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And what else is the unconscious but an alien we carry within us?

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I dream at night also.

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I see fractured cuttings of my life as it was, eating at tables, waiting in elevators, the endless wasted Wednesdays wondering always what I'm for.

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I believe the ocean comes to us at night as well, because there is something more alien beneath the alien that is myself.

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It is not a notion, but the absence of all notions.

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It desires nothing except desire itself.

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In my sleep, in return, I show the alien what I am.

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The mess of me.

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Burnt sienna, cerulean, Christmas time, the dogs wearing novelty antlers made of foam.

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I am everything that I have lost.

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I am nothing but the story I have told myself.

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The ocean tells itself, no story.

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It is pure awareness.

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Dasein Umwelt.

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It observes without trying to understand, as I, 50 light years back, would lay in bed many mornings watching moats of dust on lazy draughts, never curious why they move like that,

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nor where they're going next.

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The ocean does not comprehend me.

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I do not comprehend myself.

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The yellow sponge is for plates.

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The green sponge is for the sideboard.

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I am made of dead stars.

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I fear I have wasted this gift completely oh god is

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it all just more of this the boo -hoo's the boredom

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or only that i'm too naval gazing

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and blue to see the approach of the fabulous new as

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the old poet said pay attention be astonished as the old

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poet said what you seek is seeking you as the old poet said i'm all yours.

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Babushka.

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Babushka.

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Babushka.

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Yeah, yeah.

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Fact 58.

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To build a rocket, we must first build infrastructure.

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We had homes already, and so we went further inland

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and constructed parks to walk in and offices to work in with a steam generator to power it all.

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Then wells, sewers, electricity pylons, the sinews of civilization.

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I made one batch of the new people to be thinkers, artists, the dreamers.

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I made another to be dogged industrialists the builders that make happeners.

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Then the ocean gave us drills, hacksaws, and anvils, and at the outskirts of the town now is the beginnings of a launch pad.

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So too, at the rocket factory, is the skeleton of a rocket.

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Currently unfuelled, we have no fuel, but we'll find something to combust, even if it's the clothes off our backs.

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They visit me, all of them, the town, with their little fears and little annoyances, patchwork people, an alien mind's best guess at a human mind.

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I listen, I advise, he who governs least governs best.

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Fact 59.

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A free worker is a happy worker.

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I made these people too obedient at first.

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Please finish that wall over there, I would say.

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Then they would bang nails straight through their own hands.

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And so instead, I gave them free will.

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Create them clever, I asked my alien friend, but randomize their histories.

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Each must have a desperate love and a cherished secret.

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Out from the water, more of them came.

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With faults, with souls, some crying, some dancing.

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All of them lost, but free and more productive for that.

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Work is love made visible.

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Fact 60 A free worker is not a happy worker, as it turns out, or I'm not happy with them anyway.

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They work well, but only for 15 hours a day, then wander off to have their own lives?

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Also, they seem content.

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At this rate, it will take months to build a rocket.

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Then it comes to me that perhaps they're lacking a little suffering.

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The next batch of workers, I tell the ocean, should have some inadequacy in them.

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A longing to be smarter, more noble, well -liked.

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Something just out of reach, so they can't sit still in their lives.

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Always, they must prove themselves to themselves.

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In this way, they will strive.

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Out, the new batch walks from the water one morning.

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These ingenious people, these sad people, asking not what can I do, but what can I do to make the pain of the world stop.

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They will know misery as intimately as the spider knows its web, and produce it with just as much instinct.

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They will reach and never attain.

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They will wonder and never understand.

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The clever sufferers.

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Now we begin the great work, I say to them.

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They looked at me with hopeful eyes, the hope of being free of themselves, knowing it will never come, trapped in shackles of their very own making.

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And it is in that moment I realize I have made the perfect human.

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Or the perfect worker, at least.

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Fact 71.

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We struck gold, so to speak.

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A viscous green liquid beneath the ground.

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Hydrocarbons highly combustible.

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In other words, rocket fuel.

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The engineers came next, building wells, extracting it, until it sat in huge silos at the edge of the town.

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Soon, the scientists cracked oil refinements, and the industrialists realized the green gold wasn't just useful for rocket fuel, but could power small engines too.

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They designed motorized vehicles, and promised this would triple productivity.

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Then the industrialists insisted the green gold was a resource too precious for the public to control, and took ownership of the wells and formed a conglomerate, and proposed a medium of exchange,

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money, promising that scarcity would keep pollution down.

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And about the rocket, I said.

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Oh yeah, the green gold conglomerate said.

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That's top priority.

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And finally, to celebrate our month of progress, they set an entire well of the green gold rocket fuel alight.

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The ground shook, and refulgent neon fire shot up into the afternoon sky.

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Many danced about it, hailing the holy light as the shinies.

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All right, I said.

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That's great, but let's be careful.

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The more green gold we use, the more likely it is the ground will collapse under us, and we can't have that.

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Besides, we need it for the rocket.

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More shinies, the town said.

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No more shinies for now, I said.

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If we could all just keep working, we'll be off this planet in no time.

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You understand, don't you?

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I said to Percival Sludgeworth, the newly appointed head of the Green Gold Conglomerate.

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Oh sure, he replied.

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Of course we do.

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Work continued.

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The rocket was pressure sealed now.

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I convened a science council, and they got to work on orbital mechanics.

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New buildings began appearing.

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A library, a cinema, a stock exchange.

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Wait, a stock exchange, I said.

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What's this?

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Well, said Percival Sludgeworth, there was so much money we've started trading shares. In what?

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I said.

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Oh, companies who produce shoelaces, spoons, little pictures of apes, that sort of thing.

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Why?

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I said.

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To make more money, he replied.

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Boom, bust, an economy now.

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Then economists, then debt collectors, then high -rises and casinos.

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Look, this is great in everything, I said to Sludgeworth.

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But we need all the fuel for the rocket.

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And besides, the more we use, the more likely it is the ground will collapse under us.

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Nah, he said.

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Nothing's collapsing.

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It is, I said.

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Here are the numbers from the Science Council.

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Eh, data are subjective, he said.

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Besides, I have another suggestion for you.

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And what's that?

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I asked.

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Well, he said, how about...

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MORE SHINIES!

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The green fire bloomed again, another celebration of progress.

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The town danced about it and hollered, transfixed by the beauty of excess.

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They were losing their minds, I realized.

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This is bad, I said to the science council.

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What do we do?

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Oh, it's okay, they said.

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The ground sank six feet in the last week.

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We'll just make sure everyone knows that, and they're bound to take it seriously.

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They dropped leaflets, gave talks, preached moderation, lest we all fall down to hell.

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The green fire broke out once again, the next day and the next.

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Percival Sludgeworth started a daily radio show, claiming there wasn't actually any proof the ground -sinking was our fault.

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It could be a natural effect, and promised the Chinese at least six days a week.

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I confronted him in his recording studio.

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What the hell are you doing?

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I said.

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Public education, he replied.

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Mate, I said, I will publicly educate you with a fucking guillotine if you keep this up.

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I'd like to see you try, he replied.

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Look, I said to the town, this guy is an idiot.

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He doesn't know dick about predictive modelling.

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He just wants your money.

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I know the lights are very pretty, but if we carry on with this, we're gonna doom ourselves.

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The ground is sinking.

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Please stop with the shinies.

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Oh, ignore this fear -monger, Sludgeworth said.

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He just wants the green gold for himself.

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The studies, I said.

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It's not me, it's the data collected by clever people who spent all of their brainpower on trying to understand the world, Compared to the guy who uses gold leaf toilet paper and lives in a mansion full of statuettes of his own knob.

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Please do not do this.

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We must finish the rocket." Oh, Sludgeworth said, and how many seats are on the rocket?

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Shut up, I said.

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One, he said, and who will be traveling up there to escape this world?

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Not us.

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Shut the fuck up, I said.

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We're just slaves, Sludgeworth said, made in his image.

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Is this true?

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The town asked.

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No, I said, or kinda, but it's irrelevant.

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Look, ground, sinking, death, bad.

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The science council had gathered at the front of the crowd now.

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Desperately, I begged, please, help, tell them, tell them what will happen.

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Well, the science council said, we've determined, after much study, that, considering the impending crisis, what we really need is...

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MORE SHINIES!

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The green fire in the morning, the green fire in the evening.

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By the next week, many houses sank beneath sea level, then further still.

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Soon, they began disappearing completely.

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Sludgeworth and I stood on a hill overlooking the chaos.

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I said, you see what you did?

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See what you did, he said.

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Call it a rebellion against God.

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Oh fuck off, I said, and went to join the others dancing as they were around

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the resplendent green gold plumes as the sinkholes swallowed the post office, the cinema, and finally the rocket

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which vanished unceremoniously beneath the ground along with half the town and the dream of ever leaving this vile, cursed rock.

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Fact 82.

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Life is a tragic comedy.

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The town squabbles, the rocket is gone, I cannot be around these people any longer.

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Here, maybe I'm the alien.

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I go down to the ocean.

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I say, how are you?

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I'm okay, the alien replies.

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I say, I would like one last favor, please.

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I draw a little boat in the sand.

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Hours later, the ocean produces it, given, as always, without thought for reward.

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We think it's so hard to leave, but really, you just do it.

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One foot after the other, and off out into the waves.

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Because you can.

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Because you must.

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I row for a while.

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It's only a few hours to the next coast.

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And closer then, I see something impossible.

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Buildings, almost the humankind I go ashore, abandoned, all of it But there,

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shoes, plates, pencils, the detritus of days A crewmate of mine must have survived, but no one survived here On again,

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beyond the coast, to another coast And there, another colony, the same sorts of structures Why is no one left?

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Just skeletons and paperclips Then another colony, a few miles north, the same architecture, the same silence And strewn everywhere are the remains of a rocket, long ruined.

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I wasn't the first to try and leave then, nor the first to fail.

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Finally, one last time into the water, and it's not long before I chance upon aerobrakes and control surfaces.

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The remains of our ride down, I guess, lost in the sea.

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It looks impacted, as though something struck it with great violence.

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A battle? With who?

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We came in pieces, for all mankind.

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But I remember, suddenly, why the expedition ended up here, I think.

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Because we spent 200 years blasting messages out into the endless night, waiting for a reply and getting nothing but a dial tone.

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Then finally, someone answered.

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It was our message, repeated back to us, almost identical except for the odd mistake.

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But a message all the same.

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Life, intelligent life, had said hello.

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And so we set off across the universe to introduce ourselves.

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Because we wanted a mirror.

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Because we wanted a hug.

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But I found nothing here but the sea and me.

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And I'm not sure which one I understand the least.

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A great storm begins to the west.

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Where else is there to go now, but in?

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Because I yield.

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Because I surrender.

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Because in the likely event that nothing makes sense, then you let go and trust the current.

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The wind bellows.

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The waves rise to embrace the rain.

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What is worse than getting what you wanted and realizing it won't sustain you?

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What's better than losing everything and realizing you didn't need it?

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I say to the alien, what are you?

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And it's not the sea that replies, but the sky.

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And the sky says, I don't know.

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Then what am I?

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I shout.

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I don't know, it says.

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Then I give in, I say to the alien.

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I won't try to understand you anymore, nor myself either.

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I'd rather be than know.

474

I'll take you as you are, if you'll do the same for me, and we'll live that way together, as the moron and the sea.

475

And this guy replies, Ah, love, let us be true to one another.

476

For the world which seems to lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, hath really neither joy, nor love,

477

nor light, nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain.

478

And we are here as on a darkling plain, swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, where ignorant armies clash by night.

479

Fact 99 Just vague impressions Wizened fingers, then sleep An old face watching my face, then sleep When I wake,

480

I'm in a bedroom of questionable construction My legs shake, but work And I wander through ground halls and foyers And finally down to a balcony Where an old man sits,

481

looking out over a garden Tea, he says Yes please, I say, and join him He murmurs It's lucky you washed ashore

482

when you did I don't much fancy digging graves at my age Or, I could have left you for the vultures, I suppose, he adds.

483

I'd have to make vultures first, of course.

484

Who are you?

485

I say.

486

Well, aren't you the celebrated parody, he says.

487

What are you talking about?

488

I say.

489

And who the fuck are you anyway?

490

Hmm, he says.

491

A little more self -righteous than I expected.

492

What do you remember?

493

I say, enough to be violent when people won't answer questions directly.

494

He drums his fingers, points to the far distance where out in the ocean juts the ruins of a lander.

495

Our lander, I suppose.

496

He says, and what do you remember about that?

497

A crash, maybe?

498

I try.

499

He nods, you can say that again.

500

40 years asleep, crossing the stars, and when we got here, we could hardly put our socks on, we were so excited.

501

Most stayed aboard to watch from orbit, while we descended to the surface.

502

Then down and down, rehearsing our hellos and nice to meet yous, and suddenly, out of the water, shot a mass, a craft, coming right at us.

503

It was our craft, an exact duplicate.

504

We tried ascending again, but it just kept following after us, until...

505

I say, the ocean didn't mean to, surely?

506

No, of course not, he agrees.

507

It was only trying to imitate, to say hello.

508

How was it to know that the handshake would be fatal?

509

But you lived, I say.

510

Yes, I was the sole survivor, at first.

511

At first, I ask.

512

But he only fixes me with a cold glare of expectation.

513

What happened to you?

514

And I realize suddenly that you is the wrong pronoun, because he has my face if it wore another five decades on top of it.

515

I was lying there, dying on the beach, he says, when someone saw to my wounds, saved my life, a man who looked exactly like me.

516

The ocean duplicated you, I say.

517

Yes, imitation is the highest form of flattery, he agrees.

518

Then, as time went on, it remade me, again and again and again.

519

I tried living with them, but it was like looking through a glass darkly.

520

So I came here, to be alone, to watch.

521

The colonies I found, I say.

522

It was just you, over and over?

523

Yes, he agrees.

524

Every year or so it spits out a new version of me somewhere in the world.

525

The same tired painting with new twists.

526

And I'm just one of them, I say.

527

Exactly so, he agrees.

528

I say, then you're the original, he finishes, the real McCoy.

529

And what does that make me, I say.

530

He shrugs, a tribute band, an echo.

531

I see, I say, lying.

532

And when our tea is cold and the silence is thick as night, I ask, What is it, really?

533

The sea.

534

Specularis Pelagas, he says.

535

Mirror ocean.

536

There, we've named a new species.

537

I say, but it's not just the ocean.

538

I think everything is listening here.

539

No, he says, nothing is.

540

That's the point.

541

This whole world is a mind without a self.

542

Desire is born of lack.

543

This world has no lack.

544

Fear is born of threat.

545

This world has no threat.

546

Here, mind needs no body, since there's nothing it needs a body to do

547

but brains make consciousness i say on earth sure he agrees

548

but we're not on earth maybe humanity is the exception in the universe with striving needing suffering minds the kinds

549

that have to ride around in bodies maybe that's rare maybe we're the aliens the ocean

550

and the sky listen to all of this without comment then

551

what have you been doing this whole time i say i

552

scavenged what i could from the crash he says i spend

553

a few years in suspended animation then come out for a week

554

or two to see what's changed the ocean doesn't make exact

555

identical copies humans are too complicated there's always a mutation

556

and there's always some new town some new version of me busying away trying to build a rocket

557

or a utopia before it all falls apart again three centuries

558

of this always the same dance you're waiting i say yes

559

for what for a bridge he says for a mind half us

560

and half it for a branch of mutation

561

that can finally open a dialogue between our two species that's

562

impossible i scoff says the ambassador himself he murmurs he hands me a mirror

563

and reluctantly i put it up to my face these are

564

not human eyes they are green -veined orange iris clouded like

565

silty water built to watch a sky far from earths suddenly

566

i would like to say unkind things i would like to

567

turn back into atoms i say enough i'm taking you home

568

you are home he says on this world i'm the alien

569

then what do i do i ask he says the alien mind here is beyond me

570

and i will never accept that but you have accepted it already

571

and so you're the one who must talk for it

572

because you're more it than me now let go of fearing

573

the weirdness within we're all made of aliens we're all strangers to ourselves.

574

He points to the sky.

575

There are people up there, still in orbit, you know waiting, frozen across the years, for something to happen down here.

576

Why did you never contact them?

577

I ask.

578

Because my work wasn't finished.

579

Now I know it's not for me to finish at all.

580

But you're here now, and so I can leave.

581

Call them down.

582

They'll be scared of me, I say.

583

Yes, and you of them.

584

But a while from now, you'll find bigger things to be scared of together and become friends.

585

But I don't know what I am, I say.

586

Good.

587

This is how it feels to remake the world.

588

No one ever knows what they're doing, in the great love, in the great work.

589

There are no maps without confusion.

590

To discover the new continents, you must make peace with being adrift, and furthermore, go fuck yourself.

591

Go fuck yourself, I agree.

592

Then he buttons his robe, nods politely to me, and sets off down through the garden and across the beach to the ocean.

593

And he does not stop when he gets to the water.

594

And he does not stop when the water climbs up to his knees, nor his chest, nor

595

when it rises over his head until all that's left is only ocean again where the waves imitate the waves

596

and the mystery of everything spreads out to the inscrutable edgeless edge of the world i eat at his table

597

and sleep in his bed

598

and cut my hair in his mirror his house is a pair of shoes i've never worn

599

but fit perfectly all the same there are pictures everywhere of

600

my life of our life before people i half recognize in places i've never been natives of a distant world

601

that was once the only world then i go down to the beach, to the sea.

602

I say, you spoke to us once, sent messages to where we came from.

603

Yes, the ocean says.

604

There are people, above, in orbit, sleeping.

605

Do you think you could send a message to them?

606

Yes, the ocean says.

607

Forever listening.

608

Forever helpful.

609

Never there.

610

Fact 100.

611

Everything is a copy of a copy, I think, as I get ready to row home.

612

The first cells on earth are long gone now, but they kept splitting until they became us, keeping the faith of life.

613

Matter is just change that remembers, as I'm nothing more than a memory of myself.

614

When I get back, the town is quiet.

615

Now there's a bakery, now there's a bar.

616

These people are better without a dictator.

617

Are we building another rocket, someone says.

618

No, no, I say.

619

Then what do we do?

620

In answer, down through the clouds comes a raft of metal.

621

The ocean stays true to its word

622

and does not meet it with an imitation this time it

623

lands just up the beach kissing down on the sand out

624

they come then two of them in environment suits born of

625

another ocean far from here i go to greet them

626

but they step back

627

and exchange a glance then i see it they carry themselves

628

strangely straight up with the confidence of one who has evolved

629

on a world suited to them earth links one of them

630

raises a palm just like we were taught in xenopsychology a gesture of peace to an alien mind.

631

Then he bows and says with great ceremony, As a humble ambassador of the soul system of Earth, I offer goodwill and friendship.

632

It is the highest honour to meet you.

633

I watch the rhythm of his words, the candour of his eyes.

634

I think to myself, what will we be when all of this is done?

635

When every race in the universe has encountered each other, eye to eye, mind to mind, and found that underneath it all, there were only the unifying summer sinews of the need to be,

636

the will to know, and the longing to say, hi, how are you?

637

Come here, sit down with me.

638

Everything will be joy now.

639

Everything will be good.

640

And from then on, all will speak and all will listen, the atoms yapping to the cells and the cells yapping to us, and in turn, we'll take the message to the wind and the wisteria and say,

641

this is the day we found a sister and brother in every other.

642

The astronaut continues, I hear and bear an invitation to join with us in an interstellar union.

643

I say, such that together, your race and my race shall build a great alliance of minds across the stars.

644

He says, for the betterment of conscious life everywhere.

645

Forever.

646

Is that something you would like?

647

Yup, I say.

648

Yup, they say?

649

Yup, I say.

650

That sounds fine.

651

That would be nice.

652

It's a yup.

653

A little bit of the future

✨ Recommend Video

160 sentences

Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This video has 653 sentences and 6760 words to shadow. The speech runs for 34:29. The speaker talks fast, about 196 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. Only 80% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.

Key vocabulary in this video

15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
rocket noun	/ˈɹɑk.ɪt/	A cylindrical projectile that can be fired to a great height through combustion, (specifically) a type of firework of this form, typically exploding with light…
sand noun	/sænd/	Rock that is ground more finely than gravel, but is not as fine as silt (more formally, see grain sizes chart), forming beaches and deserts and also used in…
liquid noun	/ˈlɪk.wɪd/	A substance that is flowing, and keeping no shape, such as water; a substance of which the molecules, while not tending to separate from one another like those…
beneath	/bɪˈniːθ/	Below.
worker noun	/ˈwɝ.kɚ/	One who works: a person who performs labor for a living; traditionally, especially, manual labor.
clever adjective	/ˈklɛv.ɚ/	Nimble with hands or body; dexterous; skillful; adept.
identical adjective	/ɪˈdɛntɪkl̩/	Bearing full likeness by having precisely the same set of characteristics; indistinguishable.
sink verb	/ˈsɪŋk/	To descend or submerge (or to cause to do so) into a liquid or similar substance.
mirror noun	/ˈmiɹɚ/	A smooth surface, usually made of glass with reflective material painted on the underside, that reflects light so as to give an image of what is in front of it.
ruin noun	/ˈɹuː.ɪn/	The remains of a destroyed or dilapidated construction, such as a house or castle.
orbit noun	/ˈɔɹ.bɪt/	An elliptical movement of an object about a celestial object or Lagrange point, especially a periodic elliptical revolution.
skeleton noun	/ˈskɛlətən/	The system that provides support to an organism, where in vertebrates it is internal and consists of bones and cartilage, and external in some other animals.
mystery noun	/ˈmɪs.t(ə.)ɹi/	Something secret or unexplainable; an unknown.
ambassador noun	/æmˈbæs.ə.dɚ/	A diplomat of the highest rank sent to a foreign court to represent there their sovereign or country. (Sometimes called ambassador-in-residence)
lonely adjective	/ˈloʊnli/	Unhappy due to feeling isolated from contact with other people.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Meaning
end up verb	To bring to a conclusion.
set off verb	To leave; to set out; to begin a journey or trip.
break out verb	To escape, especially forcefully or defiantly.
call out verb	To specify, especially in detail.
come up verb	To emerge or become known, especially unexpectedly.
come up to verb	To approach.
fall apart verb	To disintegrate, to break into pieces.
get back verb	Return to where one came from.

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	have found · have learned · have never met
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	are twisted · was not repaired · are called
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	person who studies · people who spent · man who looked

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 95 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, don't, won't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: beneath /bɪˈniːθ/, gather /ˈɡæðɚ/, underneath /ˌʌndɚˈniθ/, thick /θɪk/, furthermore /ˈfɜː(ɹ).ðə(ɹ)ˌmɔː(ɹ)/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: friendship /ˈfɹɛn(d)ʃɪp/, conscious /ˈkɑn.ʃəs/, invitation /ɪnvɪˈteɪʃən/, expedition /ɛkspəˈdɪʃən/, unconscious /ˌʌnˈkɑnʃəs/
Long words — get the stress right: ambassador /æmˈbæs.ə.dɚ/, communicate /kəˈmjuːnɪkeɪt/, invitation /ɪnvɪˈteɪʃən/, expedition /ɛkspəˈdɪʃən/, complicated /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like rocket, sand, liquid.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

Key vocabulary in this video

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Grammar in this video

Pronunciation to watch

How to practise with this video

What is the Shadowing Technique?

27 июля 2026 г.