蓝色编年史：第十七条规则 👽

我叫里亚。

My name is Ria.

欢迎收听《安睡故事》。

Welcome to Sleep Tight Stories.

蓝色和红色正在基地的自助餐厅里，进行关于他们在地球上新生活的入职培训。

Blue is in the cafeteria with Red at the base, where they are going through orientation about their new lives on Earth.

蓝色看到餐厅对面有个女孩，对她和她正在做的事感到好奇。

Blue sees a girl across the cafeteria and is curious about her and what she is doing.

她正在读一本书，看起来像是蓝色会喜欢的那种，他想去问问她关于这本书的事。

She is reading a book that looks like something Blue would like, and he would like to ask her about it.

但在得到各自管理员的许可之前，他们不能互相交谈。

But they are not allowed to talk to each other until they have been cleared by their handlers.

于是他们找到了一种不用说话就能交流的方式。

So they find a way to communicate without saying a word.

《蓝色编年史》第17条。

The Chronicles of Blue rule 17.

布鲁盯着自己的盘子，心里琢磨着要不要冒险，还是像瑞德那样，悄悄溜回他们的小房间，不去打扰食堂里那位看起来相当能干的女主人。

Blue stared at his plate trying to decide if he dared or if, like Red, he should escape to their small room without disturbing the rather capable looking host in the cafeteria.

她浑身都是肌肉，就算笑起来，也显得很严肃。

She had muscles on top of her muscles, and even when she smiled, looked very serious.

他盘子左边放着几根看起来平平无奇的条状物，他们管这叫薯条，这名字真让人摸不着头脑。

To the left of his plate were some rather plain looking strips of what they called fries, which didn't make much sense.

动词怎么能当名词用呢？

How is a verb a noun?

对布鲁来说，英语是一门很奇怪的语言，不过他比瑞德强多了，瑞德死活不肯看他看的老地球节目。

English was a weird language to Blue, though he was much better at it than Red, who refused to watch the old Earth shows he watched.

布鲁就是从那些节目里学到各种地道的英语短语，比如“哎呀”、“我的天哪”和“搞什么鬼”。

That was where Blue learned all the best English phrases, like gee whiz, holy smokes, and what in tarnation?

他不太清楚“鬼”到底是什么，但地球人好像经常碰到。

He wasn't entirely sure what a tarnation was, but Earth people seemed to encounter them constantly.

那几根土豆条味道还行，瑞德在溜走之前就把自己那份吃完了。

The strips of potato tasted okay, and Red had eaten hers before she snuck away.

但那些方形的、叫做鸡块的东西，看起来一点都不好吃。

But those square shaped blocks of something called nuggets were not very appetizing at all.

自然界里不可能有形状完全一样的不规则物体。

Nothing natural would have the exact same irregular shape.

肯定是有人费了好大劲才把它们做成这样，这让Blue觉得既好笑又有点担心。

Someone had worked pretty hard to make them look this way, which Blue found both funny and a little concerning.

就像地球人很清楚自己在做什么，但决定不去深想。

Like Earth people knew exactly what they were doing and had decided not to think about it too hard.

Red吃薯条的时候，问过服务员那些奇怪的方块是什么。

When she was working through her fries, Red had asked the host what the odd looking squares were.

服务员很热情地回答了。

The host was cheerful about it.

地球上的小孩都爱吃这个。

Earth children loved these.

很受欢迎。

Very popular.

绝对是最爱。

Absolute favorite.

里面提到了鸡肉这个词。

Somewhere in there came the word chicken.

红咬了一口就不再吃了，留下蓝一个人坐在桌边。

Red took one bite and not another, and left Blue alone at the table.

盘子顶端是一种黄色的液体，好像叫酱汁。

To the top of the plate was a yellow liquid called a sauce, apparently.

他蘸了一下手指。

He dipped his finger in.

又甜又辣。

Very sweet and very spicy.

这两种味道他都不太熟悉。

Two flavors he hadn't had much experience with.

他拿起一块鸡块。

He took a nugget.

主人说，你得这么做，然后蘸了一下再咬一口。

The host said you do this, and dipped it before taking a bite.

这样吃起来就还能接受。

It made it acceptable.

他吃了三个，然后把餐盘推开了。

He ate three and pushed the tray away.

在等着胃里有什么反应的时候，Blue环顾了一下食堂。

As he waited for a reaction from his stomach, Blue looked around the cafeteria.

这么大的地方，基本上没什么人。

It was largely empty considering its size.

有几个管理员，还有几桌家庭，都小心翼翼地不跟对方说话。

A couple of handlers and a few families at other tables, all carefully not talking to each other.

服务台旁边站着一个拿着写字板的女士。

A woman by the service counter with a clipboard.

靠墙有个饮水机，每隔三十秒就滴一滴水。

A water dispenser near the wall that dripped every thirty seconds.

布鲁一直在数数。

Blue had been counting.

他没有纸笔。

He didn't have a pad.

基地公共休息室里的科学书，主持人说是适合年龄的，布鲁后来明白，那意思是写给需要慢慢讲解、还要鼓励才能看懂图解的人看的。

The science books in the base common room were what the hosts called age appropriate, which Blue had figured out meant written for someone who needed the diagrams explained slowly and with encouragement.

他十分钟就读完了最好的一本，还在第三章里发现了两处错误。

He'd read the best one in ten minutes and found two errors in chapter three.

没什么值得读的了，也没什么值得去的地方，因为基地的规矩很严。

There was nothing left worth reading and nowhere worth going because the rules on this base were strict.

他把四十多条规矩全背下来了。

He'd memorized all 40 something of them.

不是因为他打算遵守，而是因为你得先看清篱笆的形状，才能想办法绕过去。

Not because he planned to follow them, but because you needed to know the shape of a fence before you could figure out how to get around it.

其中一条规矩是，不同中转组的新来者，在得到管理员许可之前不能互相接触。

And one of those rules was that arrivals from different transit groups didn't interact until cleared by a handler.

除了最近心情特别不好的Red，他没人可以说话。

Other than Red, who seemed to be in a real bad mood lately, he had no one to talk to.

他越来越觉得无聊了。

He was becoming incredibly bored.

他正要起身离开，却注意到房间对面靠墙的桌子旁有个女孩正盯着他看，几乎是目不转睛。

He was about to get up and leave when he noticed a girl across the room at a table near the far wall looking right at him, almost staring.

他也看了回去。

He looked back.

她赶紧低下头。

She looked down fast.

他收拾好腰包准备去扔垃圾，又回头看了一眼。

He gathered up his waist to take to the bin and looked back over.

她又在看他了。

She was looking at him again.

他不能过去跟她说话，这是第17条规则，所以他只好多坐了一会儿，改而观察她，这倒不违反他记住的任何一条规则。

He couldn't go over and talk to her, rule 17, so he sat for a bit longer and watched instead, which wasn't against any rule he'd memorized.

记住了。

Memorized.

她看起来和他早上一样疲惫，那种奇怪的感觉，就像连续熬夜学习几天后的状态，可他们明明只是坐在飞船里。

She had the same transit tired he'd noticed in himself that morning a weird feeling, similar to what he felt after a few nights of hard studying except all they'd done was sit in a ship.

她的包放在桌上，背带上有个小小的徽章，是区域栖息地的标记，非常隐蔽，大多数地球人根本不会注意到它的存在。

Her bag was on the table, and there was a small insignia on the strap, a regional habitat marker so subtle most Earth people wouldn't register it existed.

北部走廊，以培养工程师闻名。

Northern Corridor, known for producing engineers.

她在读一些他看不太清的东西，但看起来不像基地图书馆里的任何书。

She was reading something he couldn't quite make out, but it didn't look like any of the books in the base library.

她阅读的速度不快不慢。

Her pace was not fast, not slow.

不管是什么内容，对她来说都不容易。

Whatever it was, it wasn't easy for her.

他提高了对她的评价。

He upgraded his assessment.

不过，他主要还是好奇她这本书是从哪儿来的。

Mostly, though, he wondered where she got the book.

她抬起了头。

She looked up.

他假装检查叉子，大概过了两秒钟，再抬头时，她已经在翻页了，完全没被打扰。

He pretended to examine a fork for maybe two seconds, and when he looked back up, she was just reading, turning a page completely unbothered.

他把自己知道的信息梳理了一遍。

He worked through what he knew.

她来自北方走廊栖息地，是个认真读书的人，年纪和他差不多，看起来也是旅途劳顿。

She was from the Northern Corridor habitat, was a serious reader, roughly his age, and looked transit tired.

过去十八个月里，他的作品发表在两本火星少年科学期刊上。

His work had appeared in two Martian Junior Science journals in the last eighteen months.

他的星际旅行能力测试成绩，无论从哪个角度看，都相当出色。

His transit aptitude scores were, by any measure, notable.

如果她在学业上很认真——从这本书来看，她确实如此——那她应该知道他的名字。

If she was academically serious, and the book suggested she was, she'd know his name.

所以她认出他了，一直在想办法确认，但因为规定不能跟他说话。

So she'd recognized him, had been trying to confirm it, but couldn't talk to him because of the rules.

他这个理论挺有道理，自己也挺得意的。

He had a good theory, and he felt pretty good about it.

他回头一看，她已经把书放下了，现在拿出个笔记本，写得飞快，隔着食堂都能看到笔在动。

He glanced back over, and she'd put the book down and had a notebook out now, writing fast enough that he could see the pen moving from across the cafeteria.

从他坐的位置，能看出个大概形状，有方块，有线条连着，有点像建筑图纸，但具体是什么看不出来。

From where he was sitting, he could make out the shape of it, blocks, lines between them, something almost architectural, but not enough to place it.

不是火星标准课程里的东西。

Not standard Martian curriculum.

也不是基地图书馆里的。

Not anything from the base library either.

他从来没遇到过自己一分钟内认不出来的东西。

He had never encountered something he couldn't at least partially identify within a minute.

这都超过一分钟了。

This was past a minute.

她就在十五英尺外，他却没法开口问她，说实话，这是他们离开火星以来遇到的最让人恼火的事，而那段旅程已经够漫长了。

She was 15 feet away, and he couldn't ask her about it, which was, honestly, the most annoying thing that had happened to him since they left Mars, and the trip had been extremely long.

他环顾食堂，就像他看任何东西一样，先快速扫一遍，再慢慢看细节。

He looked around the cafeteria the way he looked at everything, fast, then slower on the details.

能用的东西。

Available.

纸餐垫、托盘、杯子、两张餐巾纸，还有那个酱料碟，里面还剩一点黄色的酱。

Paper placemat, tray, cup, two napkins, the sauce dish with a little yellow left in it.

他母亲坐在三张桌子外，正和一个管理员开会，而且根据布鲁的经验，她几乎总能察觉到他正要做什么不该做的事。

His mother was three tables away in a meeting with a handler and had, in Blue's experience, an almost perfect ability to notice when he was about to do something he shouldn't.

走过去是不行了，但他也没必要走过去。

Walking over was out, but he didn't need to walk over.

他只需要知道那个围栏的形状。

He needed to know the shape of the fence.

他大概花了九十秒就搞明白了。

He worked it out in about ninety seconds.

餐垫代表参数，托盘代表通道，杯子代表数值。

Placemat for the parameters, tray for the channel, cup for the value.

那个酱料碟是个意外收获，他本来没打算用上。

The sauce dish was a bonus he hadn't planned on.

路过的工作人员看一眼，只会觉得是个孩子在摆弄午餐。

A handler glancing over would see a kid rearranging his lunch.

但要是懂行的人，看到的就完全是另一回事了。

Someone with the right foundation would see something else entirely.

他估计她有60%的可能认出这是故意的，如果她和他一样无聊的话，但笔记本显示她大概没那么无聊，所以概率又回到了60%。

He put her at 60% likely to recognize it as intentional Higher if she was as bored as he was, which the notebook suggested she probably wasn't, which brought it back down to 60.

他以前也遇到过更糟的情况。

He'd worked with worse odds.

他在餐垫上做标记，故意放慢动作，装得像随手涂鸦。

He marked the placemat, slower than his hands wanted to go, making it look like casual doodling.

他摆好托盘，挪了挪杯子。

He positioned the tray, moved the cup.

然后他抬起头，完全正常的样子，等着。

Then he looked up completely normal and waited.

等待是最难熬的部分。

Waiting was the worst part.

他数着饮水机滴下来的水滴。

He counted drips from the water dispenser.

他读着墙上食堂的安全告示，花了九秒钟，上面告诉他两个消防出口的位置，其实他已经被人带看过三次了。

He read the cafeteria safety notice on the wall, which took nine seconds, and told him the location of two fire exits he'd been shown three times already.

他整整九十秒没看她，这比写代码还费劲。

He did not look at her for ninety seconds, which required more effort than the code had.

等他看过去的时候，她正盯着自己的餐垫，手托着下巴，像是在想别的事情，只是碰巧看着那里。

When he did, she was looking at her placemat, chin on her hand like she was thinking about something else entirely and happened to be staring at it.

但接着她挪动了杯子。

But then she moved her cup.

杯子放的位置不对。

It was in the wrong position.

不是那种理解错了的错，而是她改进了的错。

Not wrong like she'd misunderstood, wrong like she'd improved it.

她把两个信号位置合并成了一个。

She'd collapsed two signal positions into one.

整个系统效率提升了30%，而这不是Blue做的。

The whole system just got 30% more efficient, and Blue had not done that.

他盯着杯子看的时间比平时稍长了一点。

He looked at the cup for a moment longer than was casual.

然后他把托盘往左移了一英寸，这场所谓的对话就这样开始了。

Then he moved his tray one inch left, and the conversation such as it was started.

节奏很慢，像在食堂里一样，一次只动一个东西。

It was slow, cafeteria slow, one object at a time.

他发现她喜欢动手做东西，这和笔记本上写的一致。

He found out she built things, which the notebook had suggested.

当她发现他就是那个在科学期刊上发表文章的人时，她的下一个信号大致翻译过来就是“显然”，Blue决定不计较，因为那个编码改进确实令人印象深刻，而且你不可能什么都得到。

When she found out he was the one from the science journals, her next signal translated roughly to obviously, which Blue decided to let go because the encoding improvement was genuinely impressive, and you couldn't have everything.

他决定叫她艾达。

He decided to call her Ada.

一个管理员从远处的门走了进来。

A handler came through the far door.

她态度和蔼，办事利落，脸上挂着那种职业性的微笑，像是每周要跟不同的家庭说同样的话四十遍的人。

She was pleasant, efficient, and had the practice smile of someone who delivered the same news to different families 40 times a week.

她拿着写字板在桌子之间走动。

She moved between the tables with her clipboard.

用餐时间快结束了。

Meal period was ending.

下一轮迎新活动马上就要开始。

Next orientation block was starting soon.

这里是有时间表的。

There was a schedule.

这个基地永远都有时间表。

There was always a schedule on this base.

布鲁看着艾达合上笔记本，放进包里，动作干脆利落，就像关门一样果断。

Blue watched Ada close her notebook and put it in her bag, flat and decisive like closing a door.

她站起来，跟旁边的女人说了句话，可能是她妈妈，然后最后扫了一眼食堂。

She stood, said something to the woman beside her, her mother probably, and then glanced across the cafeteria one last time.

看向他。

At him.

然后她就朝出口走去了。

Then she was moving toward the exit.

他妈妈悄无声息地出现在他肩旁，她总是这样，让人吓一跳。

His mother appeared at his shoulder without any warning whatsoever, which she was always terrifyingly good at.

布鲁没有跳起来。

Blue did not jump.

不过，他非常清楚面前的餐垫、杯子、托盘，所有东西都摆在那儿。

He was, however, very aware of the placemat and the cup and the tray and all of it sitting right there in front of him.

他也注意到她在看桌子，又看向远处的出口。

He was also aware of her looking at the table and towards the far exit.

她肯定知道了。

She most definitely knew.

她一向如此。

She always did.

她从小在那种环境里长大，位置摆放的暗语就是日常交流的方式。

She'd grown up in a habitat where positional shorthand was standard maintenance language.

她看托盘摆放，就像布鲁看校样一样清楚。

She could read a tray arrangement the same way Blue could read a proof.

“该走了，布鲁。”她语气和蔼地说。

Time to go, Blue, she said pleasantly.

那份和蔼本身就是警告。

The pleasantness was the warning.

她回到开会的那张桌子去收拾东西。

She went back to the table where she had her meeting to gather up her things.

布鲁最后看了艾达一眼。

Blue looked over at Ada one last time.

她差不多走到远处的门口了。

She was almost at the far door.

她没有回头。

She didn't look back.

他还是挪了挪杯子，但不确定她有没有看到。

He moved his cup anyway, but wasn't sure she saw it.

他母亲又出现在他身边。

His mother reappeared at his shoulder.

这次她什么也没说，反而更让人难受。

This time, she didn't say anything at all, which was worse.

他把垃圾扔进对应的垃圾桶后，他们松散地结伴往出口走。

After he put his garbage in their proper bins, they moved toward the exit in a loose group.

布鲁、他母亲、还有红——红不知道什么时候从他们的小房间或者别的地方冒了出来，看起来比布鲁心情好多了。

Blue, his mother, Red, who had reappeared from their small room, or wherever she'd gone looking considerably more cheerful than Blue felt.

他们经过艾达的桌子。

They passed Ada's table.

布鲁低头看了看。

Blue looked down.

她把餐垫落下了。

She'd left her placemat behind.

基地用的是纸质餐垫，一次性的，很薄，那种会吸出水渍、每顿饭后就被扔掉的那种。

The base used paper placemats, disposable, thin, the kind that absorbed water rings and got thrown out after every meal.

角落里有些记号，小小的，画得很仔细。

There were marks in the corner, small and deliberate.

不是位置编码。

Not the positional code.

是别的东西。

Something different.

他们走过的时候，他大概只有三秒钟的时间。

He had maybe three seconds as they walked by.

那是一张示意图，画得很精确，而且很快。

It was a diagram, precise and quickly done.

那种感觉就像是在想别的事情时随手画的草图。

The kind of thing someone sketches when they're thinking about something else entirely.

但这看起来完全不是那么回事。

Except this didn't look like that at all.

看起来像是她早就打算留下的东西。

It looked like something she'd been planning to leave.

方块之间用线条连接，还有他看不懂的符号，全都挤在一张纸质餐垫的角落里。

Blocks connected by lines, notation he didn't recognize, compressed into a corner of a paper placemat.

他像看其他东西一样快速而全面地扫了一眼，但还是认不出来。

He looked at it the way he looked at everything, fast and total, and still couldn't place it.

在它下面，用他们一起编的密码写着一条简短的信息。

Below it, in the encoding they'd built together, a single short message.

他在母亲带他经过那张桌子时读完了，脚步没有停顿。

He read it in the time it took his mother to steer him past the table and didn't break stride.

旁边的Red说了些什么。

Red said something beside him.

他根本没听见。

He didn't hear it.

他满脑子都是那条消息。

He was thinking about the message.

第一场迎新会讲的是地球的学校系统，完全不需要动脑子，他全程都在想那件事。

He thought about it through the first orientation session, which was about Earth school systems and required no attention whatsoever.

第二场讲社区安全，更不用听。

Through the second one about neighborhood safety, which required even less.

到了自由活动时间，他坐在椅子上，看着别的孩子玩球，完全搞不懂那有什么意思。

Through the recreational period, sitting in a chair while other kids did things with a ball that he couldn't see the point of.

他不知道还能不能再见到她。

He didn't know if he'd see her again.

AID不会公布重新安置的时间表。

The AID didn't publish relocation schedules.

他们可能被分到任何地方——不同的城市、不同的学校、不同的掩护身份，然后一切就那样结束了。

They could end up anywhere different cities, different schools, different cover stories, and that would just be that.

他读过不少关于基地运作的资料，知道那很可能是更有可能的结果。

He'd read enough about how the base worked to know that probably was the more likely outcome.

但那条消息说的是，下次。

But the message had said, next time.

他认识艾达的时间很短，短到只够判断他吃的东西会不会让他不舒服。

He'd only known Ada briefly the time it took to decide whether the food he ate was going to agree with him.

她主动帮他改进了编码，还在做一件他认不出来的东西，而且想到了在餐垫上留一条消息，用的是食堂里其他人都不会认出来的密码。

She'd improved his encoding without being asked, was working on something he couldn't identify, and had thought to leave a message on a placemat in a code that nobody else in the cafeteria would have recognized as anything at all.

她看起来是个说到做到的人。

She seemed like someone who meant what she said.

他决定相信她。

He decided to believe her.

我们的故事到这里就结束了。

And that is the end of our story.

晚安。

Good night.

晚安。

Sleep Tight.