The end of my journey 我旅途的终点
I do not know how to tell you this, my dear friend, but there was a time when I thought that I would never find a new civilization in this vast universe, that our planet was the only one in the universe that nurtured life.
Seeing your planet from afar has moved me to tears.
I don't have the life span to make it through the remaining months of this voyage. I've set the ship on a trajectory, and if I'm lucky, it's going to crash on your planet in six months, hopefully in the middle of nowhere, where no one gets hurt.
If you finally succeed in decoding our language, then I will have the final salvation, all my experiences, the failures of my world, may save another world from destruction.
As the last survivor of the world in which I live, please allow me to offer one last piece of elder advice -- be kind to your planet.
It's a long story, there were many other storytellers besides me, who stayed behind and chose to go with the planet to its doom. and from an outsider's point of view, it's a interesting story, and I think you'll enjoy reading it.
我不知如何向你说起此事，我亲爱的朋友，曾经我一度认为我永远无法在这个浩瀚的宇宙中找到新的文明，我们的星球是宇宙中唯一孕育生命的星球。
能远远的观测到你们的行星，使我深受感动。
遗憾的是，我的寿命已经无法支撑我走完这剩下的半年航程。我将飞船设置好了轨迹，如果幸运的话，它将在半年之后坠毁在你们的星球。希望没人会因此受伤。
若你们最后成功解读了我们的语言，或许是这个宇宙中最大的缘分，或许你们能从我们的愚蠢中获得启发，从而让一些本该发生的坏事不致发生。这会是我作为一个世界最后的残骸，能得到的最大安慰。
这是一个很长的故事，如果从旁观者的角度看，这个故事也未尝不有趣，我想你会有兴趣读完的。
Our planet 我们的星球
Maybe I should start with our history, how we've gone through industrialization, our social system, our lifestyle, but I want to start with the moment I sit in my spaceship and look back at our planet.
The only time I get a good look at our planet, is when I leave it.
From space, from my point of view, I didn't see this as a dying planet at all. The ocean was still blue, though there were tiny black and dark red spots; There are also great forests on the surface, though interspersed with dark grey areas and great deserts; In most places in the north, the snow mountains are still white, with some specks and mottles; In the middle of the continent, a light brown dust cloud wafts.
She was polluted, but she was still beautiful, and her beauty made me suspect that my journey was a lie, that my planet was far from certain destruction.
Every day that I could observe her, I saw her, and I recognized the fact that she was indeed hurtling toward collapse. When I realized this, I stopped observing her.
或许我应该从我们的历史说起，说我们如何经历过工业化，我们的社会体制，我们的生活习惯，可是我还是想从我坐在飞船上，回头看我们星球的那一刻说起。 我唯一一次好好注视我们的星球，是在我离开它的时候。 从太空中看，从我的视角看，我一点不觉得这是一个即将毁灭的星球。海洋还是深蓝色的，虽然有一些黑色的和暗红色的细小斑点；地表还有大片的森林，虽然中间夹杂着深灰色的地带和大片的沙漠；北方的大部分地方雪山也依然洁白，中间夹杂着一些星星点点的杂色；大陆的中间，飘荡着浅棕色的尘埃云。 经受了这么多污染，她依然很美，她的美让我怀疑我的旅途是出于一个谎言，我的星球远未到必然毁灭的地步。 在我还能观测到她的每一天，我都看到，并认识到这个事实，她确实在快速奔向破灭。当我意识到这一点时，我不再看她了。
What is life? 生命是什么
I've always thought that life is an eternal epic, but it's not. From the perspective of the universe, life is just a long chemical reaction, and the Earth is the furnace of it. It took millions of years. When human was born, the reaction reached its climax, and then it was over. Life goes by like a firework of the universe.
Life is beautiful; its beauty lies in order and in harmony with its surroundings. Our scientists have already observed that when the environment in which organisms live changes, the shape of the next generation changes as well, as if they take cues from the environment.
So they realized that life doesn't just exist in organisms, it exists outside of organisms. Life pervades the environment we live in, connecting us like invisible threads.
But we were like children who have begun to rebel before they are born, constantly trying to break the umbilical cord that connects us to nature.
Industrialization and the explosion of technology have made us arrogant. We have all the power, we own the world, we are above all other creatures.
When I was born, it is when human arrogance reached its climax.
When I was growing up, I saw people panic, anger, self-doubt, despair. The world that we believed we could conquer, gradually slipped out of our control.
我们一直认为，生命是一场永恒的史诗，但事实并非如此。从宇宙的视角看，生命只是一场漫长的化学反应，地球就是这场反应发生的反应炉，这花费了数亿年的时间，当人类诞生时，这场反应到达了高潮，然后在原料耗尽，产生了无数废物之后，它就这样结束了。生命就像烟花一般消逝了。
生命是美丽的，它的美存在于秩序之中，也存在于它和周围环境的和谐之中。我们的科学家们很早就观测到了，当生物生存的环境改变时，它们下一代的形态也会随之发生变化，就像它们从环境中获得了某种指示。
于是他们意识到了，生命不仅存在于有机体之中，还存在于有机体之外。生命充斥着我们所生存的环境，像无形的丝线一样与我们连接在一起。
我们之于地球，如同还未出生就已经开始叛逆的婴儿。
Fish 鱼
I was born in a small city on the coast. My father was a fisherman.
He told me that fish should be sent away as soon as possible, because if they lay in the tank for too long, their shape would change -- their bodies would take on a curved shape and they could only swim in circles, and even if they were taken out and put back in the water, they would never swim in a straight line.
"Before, it would have been fine for a month, but now, after a week, the bone is bent."
I tiptoed into the tank full of seawater. The fish's body curved exactly as the outside of the tank. Their eyes on the outside were completely atrophied, and their eyes on the inside were bulged out, staring at their fellow prisoners. All the fish swim in the same direction, and when they swim, they are like a whirlpool. At that time, I feel that the fish and the tank together may be a complete life, the swimming fish is its breath.
Not long after that, I rarely saw any fish in the tank. Once the fish were caught, they were frozen. Otherwise, my father told me, the fish would have changed into their containers almost in a day. It was when I was ten years old, and the Big Mix was just beginning.
我在沿海的一个小城市出生，我的父亲是个渔民。
他告诉我，捕到的鱼要尽快送走，如果它们躺在鱼缸里太久，它们的形态就会产生变化——它们的身体会呈现出弯曲的体态，只能绕着圈游泳，即使捞出来放回水里，它也永远都游不出直线。
"要是以前，可能放一个月都没事，但是现在，一个星期过去，鱼骨就弯曲了。"
我踮着脚朝那个盛满海水的鱼缸里看去，里面的鱼身体的弧度和鱼缸外沿的弧度完全相同，它们朝向外侧的眼睛完全萎缩了，朝里侧的眼睛则向外凸起，注视着它的狱友们。所有鱼都朝着相同的方向游动，当它们游动的时候，如同一个漩涡，那时候我感觉到，这里面的鱼和鱼缸加在一起，或许才是一个完整的生命，游动的鱼群是它的呼吸，它安静的接受了自己的命运，等待着被人端上餐桌的那一天。
之后，我很少见到那个鱼缸里有鱼了，鱼被打捞上来后就进行冷冻，父亲告诉我：否则那些鱼几乎是一天之内，就会变成盛装它们容器的模样。
那是在我十岁那年，大混合刚刚开始。
Mutation 变异
We know that organisms evolve as the environment they live in changes. But we never thought that one day this would happen so quickly. The lizards that dived into the water developed gills after a day, and the grasshoppers that buried into the soil developed forelimbs for drilling in an hour. Squirrels dropped from high altitudes learn to glide before they reach the ground.
Such variations tend to be concentrated in such a small area that it is believed that a force not yet observed is responsible for them.
When plastic was created, we knew it would change the world. It's light, strong, non-toxic, and cheap for next to nothing. It is so ubiquitous that it has become the basic building block of human society.
Twenty years ago, a fish was fished out of the sea. Its eyes were two bottle caps, and its body was covered with a layer of clear plastic.
It was caught by my father, and he went on TV for it.
This is the first time humans have seen a mixture of living and non-living structures. But soon, the mutation appeared all over the world.
我们知道，生物会随着生存环境的变化而演变。但我们从未想过，有一天这演变的速度会是这么快。投入水里的蜥蜴在一天之后就长出了腮，埋进泥土里的蚂蚱一小时后长出了用于钻地的前肢；从高空扔下的松鼠，还没落到地面就学会了滑翔。
这类变异往往集中在一片很小的区域，以至于人们相信一种尚未被观测到的力量促成了这些变化。他们相信，生物在更快的适应自然。
但他们忽视了一点，就是各种人造物在逐渐填充自然界，成为新的自然。
当塑料这种透明的物质被创造出来的时候，我们就知道它会改变世界。它轻而坚固，无毒无害，便宜得几乎不要钱。它无处不在，成为了人类社会的基本构成元素。
二十年前，一条鱼从近海被打捞上来，它的眼睛是两个瓶盖，它的体表覆盖着一层透明的塑料。
打捞上来这条鱼的，就是我的父亲，他为此还上了电视。这是人类第一次见到生物和非生物的混合结构。但很快，这类变异出现在世界各地。