Vitalik's Sci-Fi Novel "Snow Moon" Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Sa Zu Du, Zego · 3724 Grassland 22

Zeyi watched out the train window as the train began to slow down.

At first, he saw trees. Then he began to see buildings growing denser. A few minutes later, he finally saw the station.

A sign slowly passed across the window.

Sa Zu Du sa dzu du

"The Main City," the capital of Zego.

The train stopped, and Zeyi heard the sound of the doors opening. The other passengers also stood up and began to gather their luggage.

Zeyi decided not to rush to leave first, but instead to make the most of his time. Over the course of about two minutes, he finished his Mingpengtai games against the bots.

Fen had never gotten around to writing tools or fine-tuning the AI for custom rules, so Zeyi could still only play against unadjusted general-purpose AI.

Just then, several other AIs conceded one after another. Zeyi had defeated them in a one-versus-three match. To compensate for their technical shortcomings, he had adjusted the game: he occupied only one corner, allotted the other three corners to the three AIs, and had them team up against him. Even so, Zeyi still won. He realized that three-on-one hadn't even given the AIs much of an advantage—this match format wasn't in their training data, so they made low-level mistakes and even devoured each other's negentropy.

Zeyi put away the device in his hands and sighed.

By this time, almost all the other passengers had gotten off. Zeyi grabbed his bag, stood up, and walked out of the train as well.

When he stepped out, six people wearing Mingpengtai monk robes were waiting for him.

"Welcome to Sa Zu Du, Zeyi," an older woman about Mu's age said to him.

"Glad to be here," Zeyi replied quickly. "This is only my second time in the capital."

"By the way, my name is Su. I'm one of the organizers of the national tournament."

"Nice to meet you, Su."

"So what's my schedule for the next few days?"

"Check into the hotel first, then tomorrow morning there's the welcome ceremony. Thirty-two contestants, the brightest young people in all of Zego's Mingpengtai. You'll meet them all."

Su led Zeyi to a room with many doors. One of the doors opened, and on the other side Zeyi saw the interior of a black car, identical to the one that had taken him to the chip factory months ago. "Unfortunately, Zeyi, I have to leave you here. In half a long-hour, another contestant will arrive here by train. But I wish you a smooth journey and a good rest."

"Thank you so much."

Zeyi got into the car, and the door closed. The car began to move.

Zeyi stared out the window, marveling at the buildings and trees in the city. Some parts of it didn't look all that different from Pafugai Du, though there were fewer electronics stores here and more variety of establishments. Some pharmacies.

On the window of one of the shops, Zeyi saw a sign like this:

ti ka dia shu fe cen su jui hui

"Get your longevity package here"

Soon, the health shops were replaced by shops selling art furniture and other home goods.

Next came some traditional-style restaurants and teahouses, styled after Zego's own medieval era.

In an instant, the buildings on the right side came to a complete stop, and Zeyi could see a park. Behind the park, Zeyi could see several mountain pyramids, each about half the height of the mountain pyramid south of Pafugai Du.

A minute later, the park ended, and the car crossed a bridge over a small river. Zeyi could see buildings growing denser ahead.

The road gradually sank downward, becoming a tunnel.

A few minutes later, after a few more turns, the car stopped. When the door opened, it was pressed tightly against another door, completely concealing Zeyi, invisible both from outside the car and from the building he was entering.

Zeyi stepped out. He was in a hotel.

He walked to the nearest green circle and tapped it with his watch.

Reputation verified above 150. No payment required. Approved, room number 304.

Zeyi's watch beeped, confirming the room key.

Zeyi entered his room and took a shower.

He quickly fell asleep.

The alarm rang.

Zeyi tapped his watch to check the time. The watch showed 30,003. Only half a long-hour remained until the opening ceremony. He pressed a few times on the room service menu and ordered a glass of fruit and vegetable juice.

He got dressed.

Three minutes later, the juice arrived, and Zeyi quickly drank it down. He immediately felt energized—or at least, energized enough to make it to the venue.

Without wasting any more time, he opened the door and went downstairs.

A black car was already waiting for him. Zeyi crossed the lobby and immediately stepped into the already-open hotel door and car door pressed tightly together. The door closed.

The car began to move, and Zeyi took out the cryptography textbook that Deng had recommended to him at a conference, continuing from where he had left off.

That section was about hash functions. In the middle of the page was a large diagram.

"The Concept of Hash Algorithms."

Zeyi read the accompanying text.

It was said that hash algorithms can create shrunken fingerprints for large amounts of information while still uniquely identifying the original information. The goal is to make it extremely difficult to find two different pieces of data with the same hash value.

Hashing essentially destroys information—representing something larger with something smaller is their entire purpose. But there is a paradox: in the internal workings of all the best hash functions we have built, the largest component is an entropy-preserving transformation: a permutation.

The core building block maps inputs one-to-one to outputs. Not only that, it can also run efficiently forward or backward. The compression and irreversibility come from a simple wrapper layer on the outside: deleting part of the original input, then XORing it with the ending portion. Why design it this way? Why build irreversibility on top of reversibility? The reason is subtle. If you directly construct an irreversible process, you cannot control when entropy gets destroyed; once an irreversible round function runs too many times, about half the entropy collapses, and the protocol's security degrades along with it. Therefore, even if destroying information is the ultimate goal, it is still best to clearly separate out the part that actually performs the destruction—destroying information in your own way, at a well-defined point in the algorithm.

Zeyi put away the device in his hands and leaned back.

It's all entropy, isn't it, he thought.

A minute later, the car suddenly slowed and turned left. To his right, Zeyi could see an area cordoned off by safety barriers, containing various large vehicles.

"What happened?" Zeyi asked aloud, and the driver could tell this was directed at him.

"An explosion at an advanced biological research lab. As usual, probably the North Pole people. They'll spend a few days cleaning up to make sure everything is safe."

A few minutes later, the car slowed and stopped. The door opened, leading directly into a corridor.

Zeyi passed through the tunnel and went down the stairs.

He saw a door in front of him. This door looked very similar to the door of the Mingpengtai room inside the Pafugai Du mountain pyramid: a series of stone bricks curving into an arch near the top, with a symbol at the top: two horizontal arms meeting in the middle, fists colliding.

However, this door was noticeably larger, better maintained, and more lavishly decorated.

Zeyi tapped the green circle with his watch, and the door opened. He walked through.

He entered a room with about fifty chairs, already occupied by about twenty contestants. On the stage, he recognized Su; besides her, there were three priests.

Zeyi sat down. Over the next fifteen minutes, the other contestants sat down in their own chairs.

An older boy sat down next to Zeyi.

"Hi, I'm Deluin," he said.

That's not a Zego name, Zeyi thought.

"I'm Zeyi."

"Where are you from?"

"Ah, I'm from Red County. My name gives me away, doesn't it?"

Zeyi laughed. "Is that everyone's reaction?"

Deluin laughed along with Zeyi.

"De Lu hin, that's what they call me here. 'A fork with an appearance.' Cute name, don't you think?"

"You study here? Did your parents immigrate?"

"Ah, I'm a foreign contestant. This time they invited four foreign contestants, just to make the competition more fun."

"Are you excited?"

"Of course. Actually, this is my first time in Zego. Super cool place."

The bell rang, and the contestants quickly fell silent.

"Welcome to the National Mingpengtai Championship," Su began. "I am honored to meet so many outstanding contestants this year, and I hope everyone who has arrived has had a wonderful evening and a wonderful morning."

"I am delighted to introduce our chief organizer, Master of Mimicry Jin."

Another priest stepped forward and began to speak.

"This is a special moment for all of us Zego people, not only for us and for you, but also for the millions of Zego people across the country watching the competition, because they will see the brightest of Zego's new generation face off against one another."

"I am also honored to announce that this year we have four distinguished foreign guests joining us."

"Today, we will take a walk through the Mingpengtai Museum inside this mountain pyramid. Tomorrow, we will do some sightseeing around Sa Zu Du, and in the evening you will have a chance to rest. Two days from now, the first championship match will begin."

"The qualifiers will consist of six rounds, with eight days of rest between each match."

"Of you thirty-two, the four players with the most wins will advance to the semifinals. If there are not exactly four players who pass the win threshold, we will break ties by the geometric mean of the number of rounds survived before losing a match and the inverse of the number of winning rounds, counting up to eight thousand rounds. This way, there is no incentive to quit before eight thousand rounds. If there is still a tie, we will insert an additional round. Qualifiers."

"I hope you will enjoy the competition, enjoy everything Sa Zu Du has to offer, but just as importantly, enjoy each other's company. Here, you are not enemies, only temporary rivals. After leaving the arena, you should regard each other as friends, and remember that we all belong to the same common cause. Dze go ba fau gie."

"Dze go ba fau gie," all the contestants answered in unison.

"Now please follow Su, who will lead everyone on a tour of the museum."

3724 Grassland Time 25

Bai → [dia lau shau] 23098

Zeyi woke up. Bai was calling.

Zeyi tapped his watch.

Bai asked, "How's it going over there?"

"It's a bit early for a call now, isn't it? I still have 19 minutes before my alarm wakes me up."

Zeyi paused, then decided to answer Bai's question.

"Everything's fine. The museum exhibition three days ago was wonderful, and the next day I got to see a group of Sa Zu Du. Also ran into someone from Red County."

"A contestant?"

"Yes, they decided to make it a bit more international this year."

"How's Pafugai?"

"Ask me something I can answer. For quite a while now, I've been staring across the river at the mountain pyramid where you'll be playing."

Zeyi sat up.

"You're here?"

"Deng's people found me and asked me to come record all the contestants' strategies."

"Today is your first match, right?"

"Indeed it is."

"Want me to come help you, or at least watch?"

"I... think I'm fine. And I doubt you could get a ticket to the live stadium."

"Not if you let me in."

Zeyi groaned.

"Then I'll just watch from afar. We're all rooting for you!"

"How's Fen? I haven't heard from him in days."

"I guess he's busy with Bansongpei. He hasn't talked to me in days either."

"All right then. All right, I need to start getting ready. Hope you have a good day!"

"Good luck, you'll need it!"

"Oh, right, tomorrow let's go play a practice match."

Zeyi ordered another fruit and vegetable juice and got dressed. A few minutes later, the juice arrived, and Zeyi quickly drank it down. He opened the car door, went downstairs, and got into the waiting car.

Twenty minutes later, the car arrived at the entrance of the pyramid.

Zeyi stepped out and began walking through the tunnel.

After walking several hundred meters and making a few more turns, he once again came to that massive stone-brick door. Immediately after entering, he turned right and walked into a corridor he hadn't even noticed when he first came three days ago. Following the signs, he soon arrived at the waiting room.

He saw Su, and another contestant.

"Welcome, Zeyi! Come meet Bo."

"Nice to meet you, Zeyi."

"Nice to meet you too, Bo."

"This is going to be an interesting match today, I'm sure of it."

A robot came over and poured tea for the three of them. They each drank a cup.

"So what happens now? We sit for a long time without network access while others are playing, so we won't learn the new rules in advance?"

"Correct. And handheld devices or watches are not allowed either. The robots will come to collect them in a minute. You can watch last year's matches on the screen over there."

One long-hour later, the elevator doors opened, and Zeyi and Bo each stepped into their own elevators. Su waved goodbye to them. The doors closed. A quarter-minute later, Zeyi's elevator door opened again, revealing a massive room far larger than the one in Pafugai Du. It seemed like five to ten thousand people were watching. A path lit up, pointing toward a giant console with a chair.

Zeyi walked forward. In the distance, he could see Bo's figure walking forward as well. He reached the chair and sat down.

Handheld-device-sized drones buzzed around Zeyi as they flew, scanning for any cheating devices. This time, the number of drones was about three times that of Pafugai Du, and their shapes and sizes were more varied as well. The drones buzzed for about twenty ke, then retreated to their resting positions.

A loud automated voice announced: "MU GU GEI FA," this time sounding more like a female voice. It would begin in fifty ke.

Zeyi closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to calm himself. This match wasn't decisive, he knew: if he lost, he could make up for it in other matches. But on the other hand, that fact made him even more afraid: with the excuse of "it's okay to lose," would his brain have the motivation to focus all its attention and mental power on the match and win it?

"LE MU GEI FA"

Zeyi opened his eyes again.

"PA GU GEI FA"

Zeyi waited patiently.

"Welcome to today's fourth qualification match at the North Stadium. Everyone, meet our contestants for this round: Zeyi Reimin from Pafugai Du, and Bo Zumei from Sa Zu Du."

"