Pleased to Meet You
很高兴见到你
One of your philosophers said, "It is not to be thought that the life of darkness is sunk in misery and lost in sorrow. There is no sorrow. For sorrow is a thing that is swallowed up in death, and death and dying are the very life of the darkness." He was a shoemaker. He was right, and it matters more than anything.
你们的一位哲学家说，“不要认为黑暗的生活沉沦在痛苦中，迷失在悲伤中。没有悲伤。因为忧愁是被死亡吞没的东西，而死亡和垂死正是黑暗的生命。他是一个鞋匠。他是对的，这比什么都重要。
According to him, the visible world is a manifestation of eternal light and eternal darkness, and it is in eternal opposition that eternity has revealed itself. The fall was necessary for creation to escape its first imperfect stasis and seek a truer form. Heresy? Well, then, I am the heresiarch. The philosopher died of a bowel disease. Those who do not exist cannot suffer and are of no account to any viable ethics. If the true path to goodness is the elimination of suffering, then only those who must exist can be allowed to exist. It is the nature of life to favor existence over nonexistence, and to prefer the fertile soil to the poisoned wind. Because those who open their mouths to that wind pass from the world and leave no descendant, whether of flesh or of thought.
根据他的说法，可见世界是永恒光明和永恒黑暗的体现，正是在永恒的对立中，永恒才显现出来。堕落是受造物摆脱其最初的不完美停滞并寻求更真实形式所必需的。异端？那么，我就是异端教士。这位哲学家死于肠病。那些不存在的人不会受苦，也与任何可行的道德无关。如果通往善良的真正道路是消除痛苦，那么只有那些必须存在的人才能被允许存在。生命的本质是偏爱存在而不是不存在，更喜欢肥沃的土壤而不是毒风。因为那些向那风张口的人，就是离开了世界，不留任何后代，无论是肉体的还是思想的。
But imagine the abomination of a world where nothing can end and no choice can be preferred to any other. Imagine the things that would suffer and never die. Imagine the lies that would flourish without context or corrective. Imagine a world without me.
但想象一下，一个世界是多么可憎，没有什么是可以结束的，没有选择可以优于任何其他选择。想象一下那些会受苦但永远不会死去的东西。想象一下，如果没有背景或纠正，谎言会蓬勃发展。想象一个没有我的世界。
Gardener and Winnower
园丁和扬厂工
Once upon a time,* a gardener and a winnower lived** together in a garden.
***曾几何时，一位园丁和一位扬厂工一起住在花园里。
* It was once before a time, because time had not yet begun.
这是一次，因为时间还没有开始。
** We did not live. We existed as principles of ontological dynamics that emerged from mathematical structures, as bodiless and inevitable as the primes.
** 我们没有活着。我们作为从数学结构中出现的本体论动力学原则而存在，与素数一样无形且不可避免。
*** It was the field of possibility that prefigured existence.这是预示存在的可能性领域。
They existed, because they had to exist. They had no antecedent and no constituents, and there is no instrument of causality by which they could be portioned into components and assigned to some schematic of their origin. If you followed the umbilical of history in search of some ultimate atavistic embryo that became them, you would end your journey marooned here in this garden.
他们存在，因为他们必须存在。它们没有前因，也没有成分，也没有因果关系工具可以将它们分成组件并分配给它们起源的某个示意图。如果你追随历史的脐带，寻找成为他们的终极胚胎，你将在这个花园里结束你的旅程。
In the morning, the gardener pushed seeds down into the wet loam of the garden to see what they would become.
早上，园丁将种子推入花园的湿壤土中，看看它们会变成什么样子。
In the evening, the winnower reaped the day's crop and separated what would flourish from what had failed.
傍晚时分，扬厂工收割了一天的庄稼，将要长盛的作物与失败的作物区分开来。
The day was longer than all of time, and the night was swifter than a glint of light on a falling sugar crystal. Insects buzzed between the flowers, and worms slithered between the roots, feeding on what was and what might be, the first gradient in existence, the first dynamo of life. Rain fell from no sky. Voices spoke without mouth or meaning. A tree of silver wings bloomed yielded fruit shed feathers bloomed again.
白昼比任何时候都长，黑夜比落下的糖晶上的一丝光芒还要快。昆虫在花朵之间嗡嗡作响，蠕虫在树根之间滑行，以过去和可能的东西为食，存在的第一个梯度，生命的第一个发电机。雨从天上落下。声音没有嘴巴或意义。一棵银色翅膀的树开花了，结出了果实，羽毛又绽放了。
In the day between the morning and the evening, the gardener and the winnower played a game of possibilities.
在白天的早晨和晚上之间，园丁和扬厂工玩了一场可能性的游戏。
The Flower Game
花的游戏
These are the rules of a game. Let it be played upon an infinite two-dimensional grid of flowers.
这些是游戏规则。让它在一个无限的二维花朵网格上播放。
Rule One. A living flower with less than two living neighbors is cut off. It dies.规则一。
一朵活的花和不到两个活的邻居被剪掉。它死了。
Rule Two. A living flower with two or three living neighbors is connected. It lives.规则二.
一朵活的花与两三个活的邻居是相连的。它活着。
Rule Three. A living flower with more than three living neighbors is starved and overcrowded. It dies.
规则 3.一朵活花有三个以上的活邻居，饥饿和过度拥挤。它死了。
Rule Four. A dead flower with exactly three living neighbors is reborn. It springs back to life.
规则四.一朵死花和三个活着的邻居重生了。它又恢复了生机。
The only play permitted in the game is the arrangement of the initial flowers.
游戏中唯一允许的玩法是初始花朵的排列。
This game fascinates kings. This game occupies the very emperors of thought. Though it has only four rules, and the board is a flat featureless grid, in it you will find changeless blocks, stoic as iron, and beacons and whirling pulsars, as well as gliders that soar out to infinity, and patterns that lay eggs and spawn other patterns, and living cells that replicate themselves wholly. In it, you may construct a universal computer with the power to simulate, very slowly, any other computer imaginable and thus simulate whole realities, including nested copies of the flower game itself. And the game is undecidable. No one can predict exactly how the game will play out except by playing it.
这个游戏让国王着迷。这个游戏占据了思想的皇帝。虽然它只有四条规则，而且棋盘是一个平坦的、没有特征的网格，但在其中你会发现不变的方块，像铁一样坚忍，还有信标和旋转的脉冲星，以及翱翔到无限的滑翔机，以及产卵和生成其他图案的图案，以及完全自我复制的活细胞。在其中，您可以构建一台通用计算机，能够非常缓慢地模拟任何其他可以想象的计算机，从而模拟整个现实，包括花卉游戏本身的嵌套副本。而且比赛是无法决定的。除了玩它，没有人能准确预测游戏将如何进行。