Chapter 767
Chapter 767: Chapter 8 Xiangyue!
Departure!
To the Moon!
_3 Chapter 767: Chapter 8 Xiangyue!
Departure!
To the Moon!
_3 Bowing her head,
she clutched Zheng Chenghe’s urn,
wiping and wiping again until it was spotless.
Time slowly trickled by.
Lin Xian still lived in the past, whereas centuries of time had already passed for Zheng Xiangyue.
At this moment, by a twist of fate,
Lin Xian did not know what to say.
“So…”
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he swallowed:“Did you bury my brother’s urn on the Moon?”
Grandma Zheng Xiangyue lifted her head, smiled softly, and began to recount the tale of bygone days—
“When I awoke from the hibernation pod, it was the year 2523, exactly 101 years ago from now.
When I came to, my mind was a blank slate; I knew nothing, had no idea where I was, nor who I was.”
“It was only after a series of educational programs following my revival from hibernation that I understood I had gone to sleep in a hibernation pod on Earth, but when Mr.
Jask launched the Mars colonization program, he seemed to have had prior knowledge of the super-disaster that would strike Earth in 2400…
He transported many hibernation pods, including mine, to the distant Mars to continue their operation.”
“The super-disaster of 2400 destroyed everything on Earth, making it uninhabitable.
Thus, I managed to evade disaster on Mars.
By the time I woke up in 2523, my congenital heart disease had been completely cured, leaving me healthy and full of vitality.
It was then that Mr.
Jask appeared and presented me with four items I had left behind…”
“A Rhine Cat Doll that had completely deformed, cracked, faded, and been resewn; an urn; a plastic-sealed sheet of notebook paper; and a similarly sealed ticket for a flight to the Moon.”
“He apologized to me, saying the Rhine Cat Doll, after 600 years of preservation, was completely shattered beyond repair.
He found many professional restorers and used all sorts of modern materials to barely fix it to this state.
Though it’s unsightly and no longer in its original form, he believed it was important to preserve a semblance of its original appearance as much as possible.
He laughed and referred to this cat as…
[the Ship of Theseus Cat].”
“At that time, I didn’t understand what the Ship of Theseus Cat meant, but later I realized…
it was just a dark joke from Mr.
Jask.”
Zheng Xiangyue, supporting her aging body, stood up again and approached the wooden bed in the stone brick house.
She carefully took out a patched-up doll from the wardrobe.
It was a so-called Rhine Cat Doll that could no longer be recognized as such.
Gone was its original appearance.
It looked more like a counterfeit product stitched together.
The Ship of Theseus Cat…
What an apt metaphor.
In fact, in the original philosophical question, it was called “the Ship of Theseus,” also known as the Theseus Paradox.
In the first century A.D., the philosopher Plutarch posed a question:
Suppose Theseus is a ship that can sail for hundreds of years on the sea.
Thanks to continuous maintenance and replacement of parts, whenever a wooden plank decayed, it would be replaced.
So on and so forth, until all the functional parts were no longer what they were at the beginning; each piece of wood was brand new.
So, the question arises…
Is the resulting ship, with every piece and plank brand new, still the original Ship of Theseus?
Or is it now a completely different ship?
If it’s not the original, then at which point did it cease to be the original?
Just like this Rhine Cat Doll before us, patched and altered.
Even though she had become an old grandmother, Zheng Xiangyue seemed to still cherish this “somewhat ugly” Rhine Cat.
She did not hand it over for Lin Xian to see, but instead placed it at the corner of her bed for him to admire from a distance.
It seems…
Zheng Xiangyue had long forgotten that this Rhine Cat Doll was actually a gift from Lin Xian.
Under the dim light of the lard lamp, Lin Xian looked intently at the Rhine Cat.
Compared to the one he had given her, one of only two giant Rhine Cats in the whole world…
you could say it was a poor imitation; probably not a scrap of fabric or a thread was from 600 years ago.
Firstly, in terms of size.
The one he gave Zheng Xiangyue was an oversized doll; initially, Zheng Xiangyue couldn’t even hold it, and it was Zheng Chenghe who helped her carry the giant Rhine Cat to her bed.
Later, when Zheng Chenghe passed away, Zheng Xiangyue grew stronger and naturally could carry the giant Rhine Cat herself.
But this “Ship of Theseus Cat” before us now was clearly much smaller, no bigger than two basketballs.
Then, in terms of style.
There was basically no resemblance to the original gigantic Rhine Cat Doll anymore.
𝑛𝘰𝘷𝕘𝗼.co
But that’s not Jask’s fault.
No toy or doll can survive 500 years unscathed.
They are bound to fall apart.
And not just traditionally break, but utterly fall apart…
all the threads would come undone, all fabric would age, discolor, become as brittle as seaweed, turning to ash upon touch…
not to mention the cotton stuffing, which would have surely turned to mush long before 500 years had passed.
So being restored to this state was already quite an achievement.
“It’s strange when you think about it.”
Zheng Xinyue looked at the doll on the bed with a loving smile:
“Mr.
Jask said he wanted to buy an exact replica, or even make a new one for me.
But no matter how hard he searched, he couldn’t find the original design…
not to mention a doll of the same style, he couldn’t find any images, photos, or promotional materials for it anywhere.”