Luyện nói tiếng Anh bằng Shadowing qua video: maybe I'm the alien
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Fact 1.
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This place is very beautiful and I must leave immediately.
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Fact 2.
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There are many strange things here and I have found nothing like me.
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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.
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Yesterday I stared at one of them to see what would happen and went blind for a while.
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I won't do that again.
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Below the big blue bit are tree things and rock things and land.
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It all keeps going until it disappears into the horizon.
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When I look inside myself, I have a horizon also.
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Everything that is me inside just keeps going until I vanish into myself.
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And the landscape in there is even more alien than this world.
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Fact 3.
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I have learned that I must put solid and liquid things in my mouth regularly and swallow them or I become grouchy.
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They reappear from me some hours later in forms I find unpleasant.
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At first, I thought the liquid waste might be useful somehow, but cleaning my face with it does not work, however.
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I won't do that again.
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Fact four.
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It is cold at night.
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Yesterday I gathered pieces of wood and rubbed them together until orange arrows came up the middle, which I will call fire.
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My face was the coldest part of me, so I put it directly into the fire.
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It hurt very much, and I made a sound like Jesus Christ, what the fuck?
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I won't do that again.
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Fact five.
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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.
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Also, So I'm wearing a one -piece garment that surely someone made.
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There are large holes in it and scars underneath the holes.
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Given the holes in my garment and in my memory, it is likely I had some kind of accident involving head trauma.
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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.
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Perhaps I came here alone, or my fellow travelers died on the way.
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Again, I do not recall.
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Fact six.
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Up the beach, inland, are dead pieces of something.
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Metal, I think.
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They are twisted and scorched in ways that don't look natural.
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Also, there are markings on some of the metal.
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The markings spell out random nouns.
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Flight control, Alcubierre, memory core.
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Many pieces of metal look like wings and flying parts.
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Perhaps this was a vehicle.
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Perhaps this was my vehicle.
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Clearly it landed with a bump.
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Surely I did too.
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Fact 7.
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I put things in my body and it changes me.
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I found a bottle of something in the metal -y vehicle ruins.
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It contained a clear liquid that tasted a bit like when I put my face in the fire.
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I drank a bit of the liquid and began to feel silly.
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I drank some more and began to feel strong.
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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.
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The next morning, the liquid came back out of my mouth
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and I had large headache and didn't feel silly
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or strong anymore i just hated myself i won't do
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that again or maybe i will do
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that again all the time either way i have fire for warmth
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and plant life for food and the ouch water for entertainment things are comfortable oh yes and then there's the alien
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fact eight something is here with me several days ago i wondered
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if i might send a message to see
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if there are others like me nearby lacking for a machine to do
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so i took a piece of wood
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and scratched out a word on the beach simply hello it
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got dark i drank some more of the ouch water
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and went to sleep in the morning my message was still on the beach
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but next to it was an identical copy hello written in
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almost exactly the same style fact nine the alien is an
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idiot who are you i wrote in the sand i stayed
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up late hoping to catch sight of whatever it was that might reply nothing came.
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Instead, the water rose up over my message, and when the tide receded again, there sat a copy of my message, as before.
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Who are you?
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I don't know, I replied.
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I don't know, it replied the next day.
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What is this thing that cohabits the world with me?
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Does it think?
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Does it want?
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I brought some of the wreckage from the vehicle down onto the beach and wrote in the sand, can you repair this for me?
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The next day, sure enough, there was the copy of my message, and a second piece of metal.
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It was not repaired.
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It was the same in every way, just as broken, just as burned.
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Identical.
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The alien is powerful.
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The alien is an idiot.
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Fact 10.
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A few things are coming back to me.
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I believe I am a xenopsychologist, a person who studies alien minds.
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I feel that I have never met an alien, but I do know a few theoretical things about them.
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Life must be a product of wherever it evolved, and the conditions wherever life evolves surely determine how it ends up thinking.
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For example, my species, whatever we are called, evolved on a world with limited calories.
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Many things tried to eat us as we tried to eat many things.
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We were both hunted and hunters.
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I suppose this is what made us so clever.
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If we had not been so clever, we would not have survived.
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This world, however, is different.
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I have found no predators, no animals.
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Plant life is everywhere though.
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The suns provide ample free energy.
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Nothing fights for food here.
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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.
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What does that mean for the alien, whatever it is that tries to communicate with me?
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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.
452
Because we wanted a mirror.
453
Because we wanted a hug.
454
But I found nothing here but the sea and me.
455
And I'm not sure which one I understand the least.
456
A great storm begins to the west.
457
Where else is there to go now, but in?
458
Because I yield.
459
Because I surrender.
460
Because in the likely event that nothing makes sense, then you let go and trust the current.
461
The wind bellows.
462
The waves rise to embrace the rain.
463
What is worse than getting what you wanted and realizing it won't sustain you?
464
What's better than losing everything and realizing you didn't need it?
465
I say to the alien, what are you?
466
And it's not the sea that replies, but the sky.
467
And the sky says, I don't know.
468
Then what am I?
469
I shout.
470
I don't know, it says.
471
Then I give in, I say to the alien.
472
I won't try to understand you anymore, nor myself either.
473
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
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Từ vựng và ghi chú luyện nói cho bài học này
Video này có 653 câu và 6760 từ để luyện shadowing. Phần lời nói dài 34:29. Người nói nói nhanh, khoảng 196 từ mỗi phút, nên sẽ có nhiều chỗ nối âm và nuốt âm. Chỉ 80% số từ nằm trong 3.000 từ tiếng Anh thông dụng nhất, nên từ vựng khá khó.
Từ vựng quan trọng trong video
15 từ đáng học trong video, kèm phiên âm và nghĩa:
| Từ | Phiên âm | Nghĩa |
|---|---|---|
| rocket danh từ | /ˈɹɑk.ɪt/ | động cơ tên lửa, tên lửa |
| sand danh từ | /sænd/ | cát |
| liquid danh từ | /ˈlɪk.wɪd/ | nước, chất lỏng |
| worker danh từ | /ˈwɝ.kɚ/ | công nhân |
| identical tính từ | /ɪˈdɛntɪkl̩/ | hệt, y hệt |
| sink động từ | /ˈsɪŋk/ | chìm |
| mirror danh từ | /ˈmiɹɚ/ | gương, kiếng |
| ruin danh từ | /ˈɹuː.ɪn/ | hư hại |
| orbit danh từ | /ˈɔɹ.bɪt/ | quỹ đạo |
| skeleton danh từ | /ˈskɛlətən/ | bộ xương |
| mystery danh từ | /ˈmɪs.t(ə.)ɹi/ | bí ẩn, huyền bí |
| ambassador danh từ | /æmˈbæs.ə.dɚ/ | đại sứ |
| lonely tính từ | /ˈloʊnli/ | cô đơn, lẻ loi |
| poet danh từ | /ˈpoʊ.ət/ | thi sĩ, nhà thơ |
| horizon danh từ | /həˈɹaɪ.zən/ | chân trời |
Cụm động từ bạn sẽ nghe
| Từ | Phiên âm | Nghĩa |
|---|---|---|
| go up động từ | lên | |
| shut up | /ʃʌt ʌp/ | câm, câm mồm |
Ngữ pháp trong video
Những cấu trúc người nói dùng nhiều nhất, kèm đúng cụm từ trong video:
| Cấu trúc | Trong video |
|---|---|
| Thì hiện tại hoàn thành have/has + quá khứ phân từ — việc đã xảy ra nhưng còn liên quan đến hiện tại | have found · have learned · have never met |
| Câu bị động be + quá khứ phân từ — nhấn vào việc xảy ra, không phải người làm | are twisted · was not repaired · are called |
| Mệnh đề quan hệ who / which + mệnh đề — thêm thông tin về người hoặc vật | person who studies · people who spent · man who looked |
Phát âm cần chú ý
Người nói dùng 95 dạng rút gọn, ví dụ I'm, don't, won't. Hãy nói theo dạng ngắn đúng như bạn nghe.
- Âm “th”: beneath /bɪˈniːθ/, gather /ˈɡæðɚ/, underneath /ˌʌndɚˈniθ/, thick /θɪk/, furthermore /ˈfɜː(ɹ).ðə(ɹ)ˌmɔː(ɹ)/
- Âm “sh” và “zh”: friendship /ˈfɹɛn(d)ʃɪp/, conscious /ˈkɑn.ʃəs/, invitation /ɪnvɪˈteɪʃən/, expedition /ɛkspəˈdɪʃən/, unconscious /ˌʌnˈkɑnʃəs/
- Từ dài — đặt trọng âm cho đúng: ambassador /æmˈbæs.ə.dɚ/, communicate /kəˈmjuːnɪkeɪt/, invitation /ɪnvɪˈteɪʃən/, expedition /ɛkspəˈdɪʃən/, complicated /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/
Cách luyện với video này
- Nghe hết video một lần, chưa cần nói, và ghi lại những từ bạn chưa biết.
- Bắt đầu ở tốc độ 0,75×, nói đuổi từng câu, rồi quay lại tốc độ bình thường khi đã quen.
- Ghi âm giọng mình rồi so với bản gốc, chú ý các từ như rocket, sand, liquid.
Phương Pháp Shadowing Là Gì?
Shadowing là kỹ thuật học ngôn ngữ có cơ sở khoa học, ban đầu được phát triển cho chương trình đào tạo phiên dịch viên chuyên nghiệp và được phổ biến rộng rãi bởi nhà đa ngôn ngữ học Dr. Alexander Arguelles. Nguyên lý cốt lõi đơn giản nhưng cực kỳ hiệu quả: bạn nghe tiếng Anh của người bản xứ và lặp lại to ngay lập tức — như một "cái bóng" (shadow) đuổi theo người nói với độ trễ chỉ 1–2 giây. Khác với luyện ngữ pháp hay học từ vựng bị động, Shadowing buộc não bộ và cơ miệng phải đồng thời xử lý và tái tạo ngôn ngữ thực tế. Các nghiên cứu khoa học xác nhận phương pháp này cải thiện đáng kể phát âm, ngữ điệu, nhịp điệu, nối âm, kỹ năng nghe và độ lưu loát khi nói — đặc biệt hiệu quả cho người luyện IELTS Speaking và muốn giao tiếp tiếng Anh tự nhiên như người bản ngữ.