Pork Jelly

Zhang Heng stood there quietly, waiting for the college student to finish laughing before asking, "What's so funny?"

"Oh, sorry. While I was standing here just now, I thought of something."

"What?"

"Did you know pork jelly is made from pigskin?"

"Yeah."

"Tell me, why has no one ever found that strange? Humans define an intelligent species as food, eating their meat, skin, even bones, as if the entire meaning of their lives from birth to death is to be eaten. Yet no one thinks that's cruel. Everyone I've met thinks it's perfectly natural." The college student poked the pork jelly in the basin. "Interesting. Is this what civilization is like here?"

"Believe me, I've seen civilization do far more interesting things," Zhang Heng said. "Eating pork jelly definitely wouldn't make the top ten."

"Then can I take it to mean that here, a higher-level species can decide the fate of a lower-level species at will, without asking what the lower-level species wants? In other words, if an even higher-level species exists, it could also turn humans into pork jelly and eat them."

"I don't think so."

"Why? Humans have done exactly that to pigs."

"Because I don't want to become pork jelly," Zhang Heng said flatly.

"Hahahaha!" The college student burst into laughter again. This time, there was finally sound, though it was rather shrill, like chalk scraping across a blackboard. When he was done laughing, he said to Zhang Heng, "You're the most interesting person I've ever met."

"Sounds like you haven't met many people before."

The college student nodded and pointed to his head. "There was something wrong with this before, so I stayed home all the time."

"You don't seem much better now either. Shouldn't you take a few more courses of medication to stabilize things?"