Vitalik's Sci-Fi Novel "Snow Moon" Chapter 19
Chapter 19
Pafugai Du, Zhego 3724 Grape Time 15
Gladias and Zey sat at a table in a cafeteria deep inside the pyramid. They could see two large screens attached to one of the walls, doing their best to pretend to be windows, displaying a view of Pafugai Du as if the cafeteria were perched atop a mountain rather than thirty meters underground.
"So who is it that you want me to meet again?" Gladias asked.
"Deng. He's a senior committee member of Kungaupei. You want to understand Zhego's institutions better — he helps manage this one, which for the past decade has been protecting us from the Arctic Shadow Movement. You'll want Viridia to learn from him, not from our official government." Just then, they heard a faint buzzing that quickly grew louder. Almost immediately, several small drones flew into view, resembling the ones used at the Mingpengtai tournament to inspect Zey's cheating equipment.
Gladias's watch buzzed.
Air
CO2 994
PM2.5 30.1
Devices
Authenticated ✓ 21
Unknown, elevated risk! 4
"What's wrong?" Zey asked.
"Ah, I think my watch is detecting these drones as threats. It's been doing that for several days now — I guess it just hasn't updated yet."
"Ah, let me check mine," Zey replied.
Zey took out his watch.
He tapped the green, then scrolled through.
"Uh... let me try this," Gladias said, staring intently at his watch.
"'Mo fan' is restaurant, so it's related to the cafeteria."
"Yes!"
"'min' is machine, 'jan' is person, so I guess the two together mean... robot?"
"Yes!"
"'Kungau' is... wait, is this related to Kungaupei? So these are Kungaupei robots?"
"Yeah, but what does 'Kungau' mean?"
"Security, I'm guessing?"
"Exactly."
"Security robots. Phew, this isn't hard at all!"
"Thankfully I'm not Fen — he'd spend half a long-hour browsing the entire interface, explaining the history of every word and why they decided to keep it when they reduced the vocabulary."
One of the robots buzzed over to Gladias and stopped, hovering about half a meter to the right of his ear.
"But anyway, why am I detecting so many hostile devices? Is there something on my watch that hasn't updated?"
"Ah, yes, it's just that every light, drone, and camera is announcing itself; the protocol has been strengthened a lot over the past few days. Your watch doesn't speak this language yet. Here, let me help you."
Zey then said in a softer voice:
"jo sun fe zin ten lai de cau tie dai"
About one ring later, the watch buzzed, indicating data received.
Zey moved his watch next to Gladias's.
"Yes"
Both watches buzzed simultaneously, indicating a connection had been established and a file was being transferred from one watch to the other. Gladias pressed a button on his watch to accept.
Then he looked at his watch again.
Air
CO2 1015
PM2.5 31.2
Devices
Authenticated ✓ 25
"Looks good!"
"Uh, you also measure CO2 and PM2.5 on that?"
"Yes! It's the Viridia standard. We care a great deal about having a clean environment. We breathe twelve kilograms of air every day — more than the total of what we eat and drink. So we really all underestimate the importance of air."
"Why is there CO2 on it? Our watches also have air sensors, but more for smoke detection and toxin detection."
"The average concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere is 300 parts per million. The air we exhale is 40,000 parts per million. So if the air you're breathing has a CO2 concentration of 700 parts per million, then either some other source is bringing in extra CO2, or — more likely — 1% of the air you're breathing is someone else's exhaled breath. Aerosol particles carrying all kinds of things stay in the air for a long time — especially airborne viruses."
"Ah, I see, so this was never about industrial pollution at all."
"In fact, I'm surprised you hadn't noticed this, and that CO2 levels here are so low. I would have thought you'd care a great deal about pandemic prevention on the defense side."
"Ah, well, you can ask him when he arrives!"
A robot came and brought Gladias a salad and tea, and brought Zey vegetables and rice topped with mushrooms and tea.
"Wait, that dish you're eating. I think this is exactly what we call the tenth dish on the Zhego food truck!" Gladias exclaimed.
"Want to try it? I'd be happy to take your salad. Tell me how it compares to the version you're used to."
"Sure!"
They swapped plates and began eating.
"Well, this is much better than what we get in Viridia," Gladias said excitedly. They continued eating in silence for a few minutes, then switched to tea after finishing.
Zey's watch buzzed again. Zey looked at his watch and his eyes widened.
"What is it?" Gladias asked.
"A message from a courtyard where I once ate in Sazu Du — this is really strange."
"It seems to be written directly to me."
"How would the courtyard know you ate there? Payment was made in Zip coins, which is completely anonymous."
"Exactly — it seems the courtyard sent it to all guests from the past half year, and there was some kind of tag that my local AI accepted but almost everyone else filtered out."
"What does it say?" Gladias asked.
"From Beautiful Plant Food Court, 2415 Liansu Street, Sazu Du — an anonymous person burned four hundred Zip coins to send this message. The message envelope says the recipient is 'Success,' age 18. That's all I know."
"That's a... carefully calibrated description."
"Indeed. They tried to make the scenario broad enough to ensure it includes me, and they burned four hundred Zip coins to signal to the courtyard, our local AIs, and us that the message was worth the effort to understand. But they also made the scenario narrow enough that they only needed four hundred Zip coins for this broadcast."
"And narrow enough that not too many people would find the message."
"Well, let me open it and see..."
Zey's eyes widened in shock again.
"What is it?"
"The message is a series of links to some files, over 60 GB in total. Apparently I need to download eighty percent of them."
"Will the download take a while?"
"About a day of wireless time. But it looks like the digital archive node inside this mountain pyramid already has enough of the files."
"Shall we walk over?"
"Exactly what I was thinking."
Zey placed his watch on a green circle at the corner of the table. After a moment, it buzzed. He stood up, and Gladias followed.
They walked out of the cafeteria and began navigating the network of tunnels.
A few minutes later, they arrived at an ornately decorated door.
On the left side of the door was a painting of a hippo reading a book, with a swamp, lush green trees, and a blue sky with white clouds in the background. On the right side was a hamster sitting in front of a computer. Both paintings skillfully balanced a cartoonish playfulness with a serious, mysterious atmosphere.
Above the door, Zey could see a line of text:
mu fu bau hai ka sha liu li dzai hen ji cin jan fe jan
ci mu fu bau fei ka zen die jia cu can hu fe lo kin liu
"'Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend,'" Zey translated for Gladias. "'Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.'"
Zey and Gladias pushed open the door and entered.
On their left, the entire wall was a large bookshelf about five meters tall, filled with paper books. The upper half of the bookshelf was set back about one meter, allowing the roof of the lower half to serve as a walkway from which one could view and retrieve books from the upper section.
The bookshelf had openings in two places on the upper level, leading to two miniature tunnels filled with more books. The bookshelf also had an opening on the lower level, also filled with books. All three openings seemed to extend inward three to six meters; after that, one book-filled corridor turned ninety degrees to the right, another turned ninety degrees to the left, and the third — the lower-level corridor — became a T-junction.
Gladias thought the book area seemed deliberately built as a maze.
On their right, there was an open area with tables, and along the walls, many computer terminals.
In front of the space near the tables, Zey saw a woman in a robe. He immediately ran toward her.
She turned around. "Welcome to the Pafugai Du Grand Library. What would you like?" she asked.
"I'd like to load a very large file from the archive."
The librarian smiled.
"I'm glad you're honest," she replied.
"Most people tell me they want to learn something noble about history, culture, or mathematics, and then go download their movies when I'm not looking."
"Well, I'm not downloading movies — this is more like... a mysterious message."
"Ah, a quest! Even if this ends up being just an excuse, even if it's just something new and interesting from my era. Well, follow me."
Zey and Gladias followed.
"So you received a mysterious message telling you to download some large files? Any idea what type?"
"So far I've only seen some hash values..."
They arrived at a computer terminal. The librarian took out a data cable and plugged one end into the terminal.
"Here, plug the other end into your handheld device."
Zey followed the librarian's instructions. The download began almost immediately.
"Wow, only eight minutes!"
"So, are you now more open to what we stuffy librarians say about physical space still being relevant to the pursuit of knowledge?"
A robot slid over to them.
"jie hei ja ma?"
A menu appeared on the screen; no food, but a variety of drinks to choose from.
Gladias immediately tapped a button to order a tea. Zey did the same.
"This space is beautiful — I'm glad you have this place."
Gladias stood up and walked over to the bookshelf with the books. He opened a few one by one. At the moment, he wasn't in the mood to rack his brain reading and interpreting Zhego — especially the early versions of Zhego in old books he couldn't read at all — so he focused on the diagrams and pictures.
Two minutes later, the robot came over to him and poured him tea. The tea was in a sealed cup, and he could only drink it through a straw. Gladias turned to Zey in surprise and saw Zey sitting at a table away from the books, already drinking his tea. The cup Zey received was open, with not much protection against spilling.
Gladias found a book about Zhego architecture titled "zui fia pai dan." He flipped through it. It contained many pictures of basements, shelters, and underground room designs inside mountain pyramids. The book presented them roughly in chronological order, starting shortly after the war against the Arctic Empire a hundred years ago.
The early designs were very utilitarian in construction, with not much consideration for comfort, or even safety against non-human threats. The middle designs began to resemble ordinary rooms, with the main obvious exception being the absence of windows. The designs in the last part of the book were very well-decorated and comfortable — even better than above-ground buildings. About half had fake windows, pretending to look outside. The other half had no windows, but instead had plants, beautifully decorated walls, and other seemingly carefully chosen items, so that occupants wouldn't see any space where they might think there should be a window.
"Gladias!" Zey called out. "Come back, it's almost done!"
Gladias turned and walked back. Just as he arrived, the last progress bar reached 100%. Another window opened automatically. The script began to run. "Rebuilding data... estimated time remaining 175," the screen displayed — not in Zhego.
Gladias and Zey drank their tea and stared at the countdown timer. The librarian was curious, quietly hovering two meters behind them.
Everything proceeded as expected, and in less than two minutes, the script completed and the screen appeared.
What did you do on Firemonth 10? Explain that day in detail.
>Zey's eyes widened.
"Let's move our meeting with Deng to tomorrow. I have a feeling this isn't a simple matter."
Gladias nodded.
"Are you going to answer it?"
Zey pressed a few buttons on his handheld device. "I'm using a log-structured file system to put this program in a sandbox, so it can't access the internet, and I can restore it to its starting state at any time. So there's no privacy leak risk, and if I'm not satisfied with the result, I can restore it to the starting state and try again. So why not?"
"Now... let me remember what I did on Firemonth 10... or rather, I'll ask my handheld device."
Zey's life event log for that day popped up. That day was his last Mingpengtai match, the semifinal against Gong — the last day of his life that was at least somewhat normal. Before that match, he woke up and met with Bai. After the match, he met with Deluin in the courtyard.
Wait, Zey thought, the courtyard... what was the address again? He checked.
The original message came from the same cafeteria.
As his local AI liked to say, that's the punchline. Zey began typing, combining the AI's records and his own quickly recovering memories to recall his life that day.
Woke up.
Meeting with Bai.
Went to watch the match.
Waited for the match.
The game itself.
Watched Deluin's match.
Brief conversation with Deluin after the match. What did I say... "My style is uglier than yours. Though I
