Chapter 56

During those half a month in prison, besides the self-criticism report, he also designed a complete set of encrypted language. He originally planned to use Morse code directly, but considering Hels’s personality, he might not want to share the same encrypted language with others, so he simply made some minor improvements.

Hels curled up on the black single-seater sofa that Horne loved to sit in, wearing Horne’s jacket. But the clothes were too big, with the hem of the jacket hanging down to his thighs, making him look like a tiny creature.

He slowly put down what he was doing, dawdled as he sat up, and scooted over to Horne’s side. Horne had him pull the black sofa closer.

Horne glanced at something behind the sofa—a gelatinous human face.

“What is that?” Horne asked. It looked like a painting, like a craft project.

Hels shook his head and did not answer, so Horne dropped the subject and continued with what he was doing.

“Do you know encrypted languages?” Horne sat cross-legged on the floor, hunched over the coffee table, seriously writing a few lines on the paper. “If there’s something you want to tell me but don’t want others to know, you can use this language.”

Considering that this child could not speak and might have even more sensitive hearing instead, Horne specially designed differences for auditory perception.

As he wrote, he explained. Hels sat on the sofa, watching Horne intently, occasionally glancing at the paper.

A coffee-colored knitted sweater hung loosely on Horne, and even the gray sweatpants were a size too big. Except when he wore his military uniform meticulously, he was always casual at home, though this casualness was only relative.

Hels carefully observed Horne.

This person was different from everyone he had met before. He seemed… reliable, perhaps.

“Traditional encrypted languages use combinations of dots and dashes to form characters. Ours does the same, but it’s optimized to be simpler while covering more ground.” Horne wrote basic examples of the encrypted language, then turned back and found Hels staring at him. He paused, smiled, and said, “What are you looking at me for? Look here.”

Horne poked the paper with the tip of his pen. Hels’s gaze shifted back to the paper.

“Human languages have two common verbs: ‘have’ or ‘exist,’ which we represent with one short; ‘is’ with two shorts; ‘I, you, he’ with one to three longs respectively. Considering combinable grammar, I’ll teach you discrete symbols and recursive nesting later.”

I am afraid: one long, two shorts, one long.

There is danger: one short, one long.

Nearby: one short, two longs.

…

Horne really liked wooden incense. Paired with the humidifier, the water vapor slowly dispersed it. Perhaps because of this, the warmth in the living room carried a hazy quality, and even his voice became cool and transparent, like those dense tiny water droplets, seeping in one by one, moistening the skin and vessels.

Wood and incense were cool and refreshing, actually not much like Horne.

Hels pondered that Horne might suit a faint floral fragrance, or the scent of morning sunlight.

“Visually, we use dots and dashes. Auditorily, we can convey information through counts and pitch variations, in forms like taps, gestures, or different tones.”

Horne demonstrated for him. He bent his fingers, using different parts to lightly tap the coffee table, producing several different tones. “When we can only transmit information through sound, low frequency represents ‘long,’ high frequency ‘short.’ For example, tapping with the nail versus the knuckle—listen, aren’t the tones different?”

Horne repeated the taps several times for Hels to hear the tones. As he tapped, he noticed Hels’s attention had shifted back to him, completely ignoring the actions.

He sighed, his voice a bit helpless. “Don’t you want to listen? If not, go read a book or sleep. I won’t continue.”

Horne set down the pen, resting his empty hands on the coffee table. He felt a little tired; the pile of things during the day had already exhausted him, though interacting with Hels lightened him up somewhat.

Hels immediately shook his head, sat up straight, leaned forward, pushed the paper and pen back toward Horne, refocused on the demonstration, propped his head, and made an expression of serious listening.

“Alright, no more distractions.” Horne took a deep breath, picked up the pen again, and continued. “Besides the two common verbs, there’s one special verb.”

He wrote the character for “love” on the paper.

“This verb consists of three shorts, so ‘I love you’ is expressed as: one long, three shorts, two longs.”

Horne looked at Hels and pointed in sequence to his own eyes, mouth, and finally pressed his hand to his chest.

“Three shorts represent eye, mouth, heart—three in one. What I see, what I say, and what’s in my heart, all you.”

Horne quickly went over the rhythms for the initial common phrases, then reached out and tapped on the table.

Dong, dong—dong—

“Try it?” Horne noticed Hels had only been watching, so he invited him to join.

Hels followed Horne’s gestures, tapping the table with his knuckle and fingertip.

Dong, dong—dong—

“Very good. Recall what this rhythm means?” Horne covered the explanation with his palm, letting him point to the corresponding line already written.

Hels was silent for a moment, then pointed to a line.

Horne smiled, removed his hand, and said softly, “You’re very smart, you remember quickly. Right, it means: nearby. I’ll teach you references later, but this rhythm means…”

He paused.

“I’m by your side.”

I’m by your side. After teaching this code, Horne’s mind was full of this phrase. He thought he had imagined it, but when he suddenly opened his eyes, he realized the regular tapping at the bedside had been this rhythm all along.

Four in the morning.

Horne rolled over and sat up, meeting the eyes of the person crouched at the edge of the bed. Horne woke up in a daze.

“What’s wrong?” Horne asked groggily, turning on the bedside lamp.

Hels just lay there watching him. After a moment, he tapped the rhythm again on the bed edge.

Horne glanced at the pitch-black sky outside the window and asked uncertainly, “Can’t sleep?”

Hels nodded.

Horne sat up, got out of bed, and went downstairs barefoot in a daze. Hels followed from behind.

In the kitchen, on low heat for two minutes, Horne handed the warmed milk to Hels, watched him drink it, then wearily went back upstairs.

Hels did not return to the attic. On the second floor, he followed Horne into his room and stood by the bed without speaking.

Horne closed his eyes, sighed, lifted the covers, and said hoarsely, “Come sleep.”

Before sleeping, Horne checked his terminal and saw a message from Ben Yian saying he had bought some ingredients and calming incense, left them at his doorstep without knocking so as not to disturb him.

He slept soundly through the night. The next day, after Horne put away the things Ben Yian bought, he took Hels to get the Resident Chip implanted. On the way back, Hels kept touching behind his ear, very uncomfortable.

“Don’t touch it; it won’t bother you by evening,” Horne instructed him.

There were not many people on the street, perhaps because the rumors had grown more exaggerated lately. The residents always thought something was wrong with the military and, getting no answers, kept speculating.

Horne patted Hels’s shoulder and said softly, “I have something to do, need to go somewhere. Can you go home by yourself? I’ll be back soon.”

He needed to discuss supplies with Ganal; bringing Hels would be inconvenient.

But Hels grabbed his clothes directly, refusing to go alone.

“Alright.”

Before they reached the fork in the road, Horne was stopped by someone.

“Major, I heard the military is about done for.”

Horne stopped, puzzled. The speaker was the usual street painting vendor he passed by, with The Creation of Adam still laid out on the ground.

The vendor usually asked how Horne was doing lately, but today he skipped that and asked this instead.

Horne frowned. “Who told you that?”

The vendor pointed behind him.

A news screen: Heroic or Reckless? Military Suffers Heavy Losses Recently!

Major Punished, Details Undisclosed. Soldiers’ Deaths: Deserved or Scapegoats?

Resident Arming Policy Imminent: Does the Military Lack Ability to Protect Loch City?

Supply Distribution: Getting Better or Worse?

Horne said indifferently, “Nothing like that. Everything is normal.”

The vendor pointed to the third item. “Are we really going to have everyone armed?”

“I haven’t received any notice,” Horne said.

He did not know where these public opinions were coming from lately. Perhaps they stemmed from the day he had left his post without authorization, when Matthew’s operational error caused a brief control tower shutdown, which spread in the city as the control tower’s electromagnetics about to vanish, forcing residents to arm themselves.

Horne closed his eyes briefly. That day’s decision mistake had triggered a series of butterfly effects.

Only after the vendor mentioned it did Horne notice the residents around him watching him. When his gaze swept over, they quickly looked away.

Perhaps because one person had started it, others grew bold and came over. “Major, is it true someone said you made a serious work mistake, but your subordinate took the punishment for you?”

“Major, how much longer can we, we live?” Another stepped forward. “Is humanity really about to hold out? Because of resources? Are our supplies no longer enough against the Aliens? I don’t want to surrender. The Aliens must die.”

Horne stood in place, about to deny it, when he was interrupted again.

“You messed up at work, why make others take the blame?” The man rushed forward but was held back by nearby residents.

“Aren’t those just rumors? Official hasn’t confirmed.”

“Major, what’s been happening lately?”

Hels stepped half a step behind Horne and held his hand from the back.

Horne stood straight, his voice calm. “Everything is normal. The military will always protect the residents. If I have any issues personally, I’ll take the punishment myself. No need to worry.”

The crowd did not stop; they surrounded him, asking for more details. Horne gave brief answers, told them to send messages via terminal if there were issues, and left with Hels.

Someone called after him from behind, but he walked faster and faster. The ground behind was collapsing; if he did not speed up, it would give way.

If something had gone wrong that night, he would surely regret it. But turning to look at Hels, who had always followed him, he felt that if he had not gone out that night, he would regret it too.

Bang! The sound of a palm slapping the table.

The leader’s office door was closed, windows tightly shut. No outside noise entered at all; only sunlight gradually filled the sealed space in place of silence.

Horne still insisted that humans and Aliens could not coexist peacefully. He still believed humanity needed to strike proactively, exterminating Alien nests as much as possible.

“The peace they talk about doesn’t exist at all.” Horne’s voice tightened, serious and earnest. He slapped the table in front of Ganal, fingertips curling, his entire arm trembling slightly. Each word squeezed out almost through clenched teeth. “This is an insidious, evil species without any sincerity. You should know that.”

Humanity’s history was not without negotiations, and he had not always been so firm. But every time the Aliens broke their word, it toppled another human stronghold. Humanity had no more futures to gamble.

“The dead are gone, but Loch City still has hundreds of thousands alive. Humanity still has hope. Why compromise so easily?” Horne continued, his arms and legs tense with muscles, even his facial muscles taut as he spoke.

Ganal sat in the chair, hands clasped, calmly watching Horne from start to finish without extra reaction. Only after Horne finished did he stand, nearly a head taller than Horne, suppressing his emotions.

He tolerated Horne’s attitude only because of the two former generals. Now this child, once teased and now grown, had perfectly inherited the trait he disliked most in them.

He walked straight to the door, opened it, and the outside noise rushed in instantly, even dizzyingly loud.

Ganal was about to speak when he saw the child standing by the door, almost pressed against it. The child startled, eyes wide, retreating several steps. Ganal kept his chin level, only shifting his gaze down to look down at the child.

“Major, I’ll take you somewhere.”