Chapter 15

Ng Security Industries Semi-Autonomous Guard Unit #A-367 lives in a pleasant black-and-white Metaverse where porterhouse steaks grow on trees, dangling¹ at head level from low branches, and blood-drenched Frisbees fly through the crisp, cool air for no reason at all, until you catch them.

He has a little yard all to himself. It has a fence around it. He knows he can't jump over the fence. He's never actually tried to jump it, because he knows he can't. He doesn't go into the yard unless he has to. It's hot out there. He has an important job: Protect the yard. Sometimes people come in and out of the yard. Most of the time, they are good people, and he doesn't bother them. He doesn't know why they are good people. He just knows it. Sometimes they are bad people, and he has to do bad things to them to make them go away. This is fitting and proper.

Out in the world beyond his yard, there are other yards with other doggies just like him. These aren't nasty dogs. They are all his friends.

The closest neighbor doggie is far away, farther than he can see. But he can hear this doggie bark sometimes, when a bad person approaches his yard. He can hear other neighbor doggies, too, a whole pack of them stretching off into the distance, in all directions. He belongs to a big pack of nice doggies.

He and the other nice doggies bark whenever a stranger comes into their yard, or even near it. The stranger doesn't hear him, but all the other doggies in the pack do. If they live nearby, they get excited. They wake up and get ready to do bad things to that stranger if he should try to come into their yard.

When a neighbor doggie barks at a stranger, pictures and sounds and smells come into his mind along with the bark. He suddenly knows what that stranger looks like. What he smells like. How he sounds. Then, if that stranger should come anywhere near his yard, he will recognize him. He will help spread the bark along to other nice doggies so that the entire pack can all be prepared to fight the stranger.

Tonight, Semi-Autonomous Guard Unit #A-367 is barking. He is not just passing some other doggie's bark to the pack. He is barking because he feels very excited about things that are happening in his yard.

First, two people came in. This made him excited because they came in very fast. Their hearts are beating quickly and they are sweating and they smell scared. He looked at these two people to see if they were carrying bad things.

The little one is carrying things that are a little naughty, but not really bad. The big one is carrying some pretty bad things. But he knows, somehow, that the big one is okay. He belongs in this yard. He is not a stranger; he lives here. And the little one is his guest.

Still, he senses there is something exciting happening. He starts to bark. The people in the yard don't hear him barking. But all the other nice doggies in the pack, far away, hear him, and when they do, they see these two scared, nice people, smell them, and hear them.

Then more people come into his yard. They are also excited; he can hear their hearts beating. Saliva² floods his mouth as he smells the hot salty blood pumping through their arteries³. These people are excited and angry and just a little bit scared. They don't live here; they are strangers. He doesn't like strangers very much.

He looks at them and sees that they are carrying three revolvers, a .38 and two .357 magnums; that the .38 is loaded with hollow-points, one of the .357s is loaded with Teflon bullets and has also been cocked; and that the pump shotgun is loaded with buckshot and already has a shell chambered, plus four more shells in its magazine.

The things that the strangers are carrying are bad. Scary things. He gets excited. He gets angry. He gets a little bit scared, but he likes being scared, to him it is the same thing as being excited. Really, he has only two emotions: sleeping and adrenaline overdrive.

The bad stranger with the shotgun is raising his weapon!

It is an utterly⁴ terrible thing. A lot of bad, excited strangers are invading his yard with evil things, come to hurt the nice visitors.

He barely has time to bark out a warning to the other nice doggies before he launches himself from his doghouse, propelled on a white-hot jet of pure, feral emotion.

1 dangling   

悬吊着( dangle的现在分词 )； 摆动不定； 用某事物诱惑…； 吊胃口

参考例句：

• The tooth hung dangling by the bedpost, now. 结果，那颗牙就晃来晃去吊在床柱上了。
• The children sat on the high wall,their legs dangling. 孩子们坐在一堵高墙上，摇晃着他们的双腿。

2 saliva   

n.唾液，口水

参考例句：

• He wiped a dribble of saliva from his chin.他擦掉了下巴上的几滴口水。
• Saliva dribbled from the baby's mouth.唾液从婴儿的嘴里流了出来。

3 arteries   

n.动脉( artery的名词复数 )；干线，要道

参考例句：

• Even grafting new blood vessels in place of the diseased coronary arteries has been tried. 甚至移植新血管代替不健康的冠状动脉的方法都已经试过。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• This is the place where the three main arteries of West London traffic met. 这就是伦敦西部三条主要交通干线的交汇处。 来自《简明英汉词典》

4 utterly   

adv.完全地，绝对地

参考例句：

• Utterly devoted to the people,he gave his life in saving his patients.他忠于人民，把毕生精力用于挽救患者的生命。
• I was utterly ravished by the way she smiled.她的微笑使我完全陶醉了。