A mysterious global disaster breaks out and human civilization collapses. In the ice-covered Arctic wilderness, all his companions have left. Only Augustine, an astronomer who is over seventy years old, chooses to stay.

In the vast universe, the spaceship "Ether" drifted alone in the vast darkness. A group of astronauts who were about to return to the earth suddenly lost contact with the earth...

But even in the most desolate and lonely space in the universe, people are still so eager to establish connections with others.

Netflix's new sci-fi thriller "The Midnight Sky" was released this week, directed and starred by George Clooney. This film is adapted from American writer Lily Brooks-Dalton's acclaimed novel "Wandering into Night". The original novel magnifies the two eternal themes of loneliness and love to the scale of the universe. The text is poetic and gentle, and has extremely touching characters. The delicate psychological description is both grand and moving.

The vast universe is desolate and ruthless, and the eternal loneliness is maddening. When the entire earth is silent and everything disappears, what is truly worth cherishing? Let us walk into this post-apocalyptic novel that explores memory, loss and self-identity - "Drifting in the Night", and see the loneliness and bondage of the end of the world.

Daylight has finally returned to the Arctic Circle, coloring the gray sky with streaks of fiery pink. Augustine stood outside the house. When he was in a good mood, this monotonous and vast scenery made him happy; when he was in a low mood, he fell into madness. The land was indifferent to him and he had nowhere to go. He didn't even know what day it was.

When he lived another life, the environment often made him feel out of place. Whenever he felt like this, he would pack everything in a soft leather suitcase and find a new place to go. After graduating from graduate school, he first worked as a researcher in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, where he first became involved in the study of dead stars. He then went to South Africa and Australia, as well as Puerto Rico, Hawaii, New Mexico and other places - he followed the most advanced telescopes and the latest Huge satellite array. The less interference from the world, the better. Continents and countries are meaningless to him. Only the sky can move him. He doesn't know any more about love than polar bears.

Almost a year ago, the last civilian researchers were moved to the nearest military base, from where they were flown back home to reunite with their families. Destructive disasters are happening in the outside world, but Augustine doesn't want to leave. He stayed here, readjusting the space to accommodate his life, his life alone. It wasn't until a day or two later that he discovered Alice, hiding in an empty dormitory.

"Are you kidding," he said to himself, "get up." He waved gently and turned to leave. Without saying a word, she followed him back to the control room. While heating water, he threw her a bag of preserved fruits and nuts, and she ate them all. He made another pack of instant oatmeal, and she finished it too.

"This is ridiculous," he muttered. And she remained silent. He handed her a book and she flipped through the pages. He didn't know if she was reading it. Augustine was immersed in his work, trying to forget about this embarrassing little girl of unknown origin. He couldn't even remember whether he had seen her before.

Someone will think of her, no doubt about it - someone will be back to take her away at any time. It must have been due to the panic during the rescue and some misunderstanding that led to her being forgotten here. However, no one came back until nightfall. The next day he placed a radio call to Alert Military Base on the northernmost tip of Ellesmere Island, but received no response. He scanned other frequencies - all frequencies - and as he scanned the spectrum, a wave of fear shot through him. Amateur radio waves were silent, emergency communications satellites were buzzing on space frequencies, and even the military aviation bands were silent. It was as if there were no radio transmitters left in the world, or no one was using them anymore. He continued scanning, but still found nothing, just static. He told himself it was due to a glitch, like a storm. He'll try again tomorrow.

When he asked the little girl a question, she just stared at him with an expression of distant curiosity, as if there was a soundproof window between them. She seems hollow: a disembodied girl with messy hair, serious eyes, and no ability to speak. He treated her like a pet because he didn't know what else to do but treat her like another species with clumsy kindness.

It has been dark for weeks, and it has been nearly two months since the evacuation. One long polar winter night, Alice broke the silence and asked Augustine a question.

"How long will it take for the sun to rise?" she asked.

This was the first time he heard her voice, except for those strange hums that he had grown accustomed to.

"Come on, we're almost halfway through.

"He told her, and did not have any special reaction because of her sudden question. She nodded, with the same expression as usual. She continued to chew the dried meat for dinner, holding the dried meat strips with both hands, and took a big bite, like A young beast that had just learned how to use its teeth. He handed her a bottle of water, thinking about a lot of questions he had been wanting to ask her, but then realized that there weren't many he wanted to ask her.

“Alice. "She replied, her eyes still fixed on the dark window.

"It sounds good. " he commented. She frowned at her reflection in the glass.

"Who are your parents? "After a while, he boldly asked again. Of course he had asked this question before, but he couldn't help but ask it again. Maybe this could solve the mystery of her appearance here and figure out which researcher she was. The child. She stared out the window and continued to chew. She didn't talk anymore that day, nor the next. As time passed, Augustine began to appreciate her for being a smart little girl. Guy, and he valued wisdom more than anything else. He recalled how he had let out a terrible roar when he first discovered her, scanning the radio frequency band, hoping that someone would break the bleak silence and come back to pick her up. He regained peace. At that time, he was still struggling with "what to do" and "why this happened" - there was no response from the frequency band, she was still here, and other issues. She had accepted the reality and began to adapt to her new life. He had been distraught by her presence and silence, but now he felt better. A feeling of appreciation gradually took hold, and he no longer cared about the unanswered questions when the long night filled the mountain tops. The question was the one she asked: How long would this darkness last?

He had never thought about the past before, but somehow, the tundra brought back everything from the past. Before his eyes, the experiences he thought he had long forgotten came back to life. He recalled the tropical observatory he had worked at, the women he had hugged, the papers he had written, and the lectures he had given. Hundreds of people. After the lecture, there would be a crowd of admirers waiting to ask for his autograph—his personal signature! The ghosts of his past achievements, sex, success, and scientific discoveries, at that time. It seems to have a special meaning. But now, the world outside Barber Observatory is quiet and empty. Perhaps those women are dead, all the papers have been burned to ashes, and the auditorium and observatory are gone. He had always imagined that after his death, his scientific discoveries would be taught in university classrooms and that future generations of scholars would write relevant papers. He had always imagined that what he left behind would be passed down for hundreds of years. , his personal life and death seemed insignificant.

He wondered if Alice would recall her past life, whether she would miss that life, and whether she would understand that it no longer existed. A house somewhere, maybe a brother or a sister, or both, parents, friends, school. He wondered what she missed most as they walked together near the research base at the end of the long night. A layer of newly fallen snow swirled on the solid snow, and they staggered across it. The moon hung low, illuminating their path. They were all wrapped in the warmest clothes. Like a snail in its shell, Alice's scarf wrapped around her nose and mouth, hiding her expression. Augustine's eyebrows and eyelashes were covered with ice as far as the eye could see. There was a vague light everywhere. Alice stopped suddenly, pointing her fat mittened fingers toward the sky. Directly above their heads, the North Star shines brilliantly. He followed her gaze upward.

"North Star," she said, her voice muffled by her scarf.

He nodded. She has moved on. This is not a question, but a statement. After a while, he followed. For the first time he was genuinely happy to have her company.

Sully's alarm clock showed that it was seven o'clock in the morning GMT. As she was putting on her socks, a nasty thought broke into her mind. The mission was successful, but... In reality, no one shared her discovery. That's what they all found. Not long before the Jupiter exploration began, the command center fell silent and there was no response. During the week-long survey, the Aether astronauts waited patiently and continued their work. The command center sent no signal to abort the mission, and there was no warning of a communications breakdown.

As the days passed, the six astronauts became more and more sensitive to the separation from the earth. They not only lost contact with the earth, but also became estranged from each other. They no longer sleep, eat, and relax as planned, but begin to act independently and work independently. Ivanov became increasingly withdrawn and moody, sequestering himself in the laboratory for hours at a time. But he's not the only one in hiding. Thiel escaped into the world of video games and vented his frustrations through games.

"What now?" Thebes asked. He looked at Harper, everyone looked at Harper, at their commander, and Harper raised his hands in defeat.

"There's no... precedent for this. They didn't mention this in the training manual. I think we'll just go ahead with everything as planned and hopefully we can have some contact once we get closer to home." "There's not much we can do in the meantime." Unless someone has other ideas, the other four astronauts shook their heads slightly. "Okay, let's follow the original plan and see how the situation develops." He paused. "Ivanov!"

Harper shouted, "Do you agree?"

The bathroom door slid open and Ivanov The husband took the toothbrush away from his mouth. "If it makes you feel better to pretend there were other options, or that we actually made a choice, fine, fine - I agree." Then he slammed the door shut.

Tiel rolled his eyes and muttered "bastard", but it was not directed at anyone.

Everyone dispersed in silence, frustrated. There's not much else to say. Thebes took the book and returned to his bed. Thiel did another set of dumbbell lifts and put them away. In Sully's cubicle, she closed her eyes and listened: Devi whispered a prayer in Hindi, Thiel's handheld device blared music, Harper's pencil smeared on the paper, Thebes The pages of the book were turned rustlingly, accompanied by the hum of the spacecraft sailing. Ivanov cursed under his breath as he left the bathroom, but later, as Sully drifted off to sleep, she thought she heard Ivanov's muffled sobs.

There are still ten months to go before the silent earth. This is an unknown and long journey home. Nostalgia gripped Sully, gripped them all. They miss the people they knew, the places they visited, and the things they left behind—which they begin to feel they will never see again. Sully thought of his daughter Lucy. She was an energetic little girl with a high-pitched voice, slightly blond hair, and brown eyes. She liked to spin around in her little house. Now she was sweeping up Sully's memories like a hurricane. Sully wished she had brought more photos, wished she had a flash drive full of photos of her daughter, not just the old one from when they left. She thought to herself, what mother wouldn't bring at least a dozen? Especially on a two-year journey during which her daughter would grow into a grown-up girl.

She tried to recreate the missing photos in her mind: those taken at Christmas, on her birthday, and when the family of three went whitewater rafting in Colorado before the divorce. . She recalled that when Lucy was little, her hair had looked like spun blond threads, and as Lucy grew older, her hair darkened. When Lucy was born, veins pulsed beneath her translucent skin. She recalled that Jack was tall, always left the first button unbuttoned, liked to roll up his sleeves, never wore a tie, and rarely wore a jacket. She thought of the line of his collarbone, the scattered hair on his chest, and the inevitable chalk dust on his shirt. She thought about the copper saucepan that hung over the gas stove in the Vancouver home where they moved after Sully got her PhD. She remembered that the front door was raspberry red, and that Lucy's favorite sheets were midnight blue with yellow stars.

Everyone on the "Ether" is trapped in a secret past, and every compartment is like a secret room of memories. They only had the necessary simple conversations with each other, trying to face the severe demands of the present. The rest of the time, everyone's faces clearly looked like they were immersed in the past.

After the receiver lost contact, the spine-chilling fear kept amplifying. Sully kept scanning radio frequencies, listening for signals, hoping to hear some sound that would indicate there were survivors on Earth. She began transmitting signals out of earshot of the other astronauts. The content she transmitted was not very professional. She was praying—not to God, she never liked the sound of that, but to the universe or the earth itself. Please, please, just one voice. An answer is fine. Anyone is fine, anything is fine. However, there was nothing. All that is left is a dark, lifeless planet surrounded by space junk, defunct satellites and the International Space Station. They were getting closer to Earth, but still no response.

It wasn't until they passed the moon that she finally heard the voice. She was muttering into a microphone early in the morning at GMT without even realizing it. These days, she can only talk to herself. Then she heard the sound: so faint, so distorted that she thought it was just atmospheric interference passing into the receiver.

She transmitted the signal again and said cautiously: "Hello."

When the voice replied to her, she almost screamed.