Vitalik's sci-fi novel "Snow Moon" Chapters 24-25

Chapter 24

Pafogai Du, Zego · 3724 Fog Hour 27

Gladias looked at his watch. The time had just reached 20000. After his phone call with Sera, he hadn't slept all night. He had tried to fall asleep twice, but each time he gave up after twenty minutes.

He couldn't sleep because he knew that three of his four beloved children were now somehow in the hands of that Northlander.

After Sera gave him that distrust, he couldn't sleep, and then she cut off contact, not even giving him a chance to apologize.

When these two things happened to him at the same time, he certainly couldn't sleep, and anyone he could embrace for emotional support was thousands of kilometers away.

In the end, thinking both about his daughter's safety and about how to restore his image in Sera's heart, he decided to take an unusual approach: call Zwen.

Zwen picked up immediately.

"Dad?"

"Are you still in contact with Lily?"

"About forty minutes ago, her icon turned green. I think she logged in from a new device."

"Okay."

"Zwen, are you willing to help us save Lily?"

"Of course! Anything for my sister."

"Then here's what I want you to do. Stay in contact with her. Reach out, ask her what happened. Don't show any sign of disagreeing with her decisions. Even show her sympathy. Keep in touch, and try to find out where she is."

"Dad..."

"What is it?"

"It's like... what Mom just told me to do a long hour ago. She gave me a lot of advice, telling me which words to say and which not to say."

Gladias opened the door, walked through the corridor until he left the hotel area, then turned left and continued through the tunnel. This was the eighth day of his life entirely underground, inside the mountain pyramid at the southern end of Pafogai Du. Shortly after arriving in Zego, he had moved here from his original hotel. The new recommendation was to move all "important business" to underground locations, and as the de facto Kungope advisor, Gladias certainly qualified.

For more than two months, he had taken a twenty-minute walk every day through the woods around the midpoint of the mountain pyramid, sometimes taking longer routes into the nearby forest. These past few days, he had spent every day in the library, learning every aspect of Zego, talking on the phone with Virdo almost daily, and thinking about how to persuade the Viridian military to cooperate with Kungope.

And today, after last night's events and only one long hour of sleep, he had no desire to go out at all.

Gladias walked very slowly. On his way to the library, he stopped multiple times to stare at the walls and any side chambers he passed.

He noticed that since he had arrived, various high-tech industries—biomedical, chip manufacturing, even automotive parts production—had all moved into this mountain pyramid. Now that he thought about it, since the annexation of the Northlands, there had been no more news of successful Northlander attacks on Zego.

He also noticed that the number of air filters and ultraviolet lamps scattered throughout had increased more than tenfold. At least the Zegoan manufacturers and Bansongpe were doing well, he thought.

He passed the entrance to a cafeteria. He saw trees about two meters tall growing in clay pots, along with various shrubs. The greenery seemed to serve a triple purpose: calming those sitting inside by letting them see nature, reducing CO2 levels, and dividing different sections of the cafeteria to improve privacy.

After walking slowly for about fifteen minutes, he finally arrived at the library entrance.

He noticed that the slogan above the door had changed since his last visit.

sun jan li shai fe to dzan dzie ka jie dau fe sei sui ji cen hai zun

ci sun gau jan li gei shai fe to dzan dzie de mia ka ti dzie ka pu she

He stopped and took a moment to read it.

"The student said: Tomorrow I will go to a magical and distant place. The teacher replied: For tomorrow, what have you done today?"

To Gladias's surprise, this admonition gave him a small surge of strength. He raised his hand, touched the green circle, opened the door, and walked into the library.

He entered the door, then slowly turned right and began walking toward one of the computer terminals.

Bai noticed him and walked over.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"I'm fine," Gladias replied in a calm, flat tone.

"I'm not so dull that I can't tell you're not fine at all. But I also understand that if you don't want to talk about it, forcing you to explain where this gloom comes from will only make you feel worse."

"So rest assured, I won't ask any questions."

She walked up to Gladias and gently hugged him.

"I just learned that Lily has been deeply influenced by Northlander propaganda over the past year; Lord Ephelion's sermons made her feel more valued and appreciated than I ever gave her. Less than a minute later, I learned that she had run away from home. A minute after that, I learned that Sera now hates me and doesn't want to talk to me."

"What do the Northlanders say—that people like her would find compelling?"

"That kind of unconditional love is meaningless. Love only has value when you love certain qualities in the object of your love. Therefore, to receive love, you must deserve it, you must earn it. Love doesn't come as constant background radiation, but as a reward for victory."

"The most important thing is to always strive to improve yourself. But if you can improve, that means you can be better than your previous self—and at that point, you've basically admitted that one person can be better than another. So the whole idea that we are all equal, that the most important thing about us is our equal humanity, is complete nonsense."

"You know... I kind of agree."

"What?"

"I'm not saying that in some absolute sense, this way of thinking is healthy for everyone. It absolutely isn't. If you think that way, then of course, once you believe you're the best, you'll want to start conquering everyone, just to prove it. What I mean is... this way of thinking has been good for me."

"What do you mean?"

"My parents died when I was very young, killed in an explosion caused by the Northlanders. I grew up with my aunt, who basically ignored me. No one loved me unconditionally. By the time I was twelve, I had to start figuring out how to make money on my own, and that's how I learned all my social skills. I could only earn others' appreciation when I provided them with something valuable, or impressed them with my success. That cycle you say Ephelion preaches—treating love as a reward for victory—that was my childhood. And because of that, I placed second in the Pafogai Du Mingpengtai competition."

"Who got first place?"

"Zeyi. His drive for success was purer and more beautiful than my desire to 'must succeed, to prove to the world that I am strong and worthy of love.'"

"And what was that motivation?"

"Curiosity."

The conversation paused for a moment. Then Gladias spoke again.

"When you hugged me a few minutes ago, weren't you offering exactly the poison Ephelion talks about? Love as a reward for weakness?"

"A year ago I wouldn't have done that."

"But it worked."

"I'd love to say I did it because I abandoned greed, that false god, and converted to the true faith that values curiosity. But even that isn't true. If I were driven by curiosity, I probably would have just asked you what happened, which would have actually provoked your resentment."

"It definitely would have."

"So what's your conclusion?"

"Maybe there really is no universal formula. Different people need different approaches. I'm not saying that all possible human motivations look the same to me—now I can say without hesitation that curiosity is almost always better than greed, and resentment is perhaps the worst motivation. But I don't think there's any approach that works for everyone."

"Then how do I save Lily? And what about Febrik and Hreida? How do I get Sera to stop hating me?"

"Maybe in this one thing, you really do need to be at least ten or twenty percent like the Northlanders. As long as we can win, your family can be fully reunited. Think from Sera's perspective: the only way for her to be happy again is to embrace Febrik, Hreida, and Lily again. Emotional support and love alone can't bring those three back; the only thing that can bring them back is your victory—helping Viridia defeat the Northlanders. Let that motivate you to work harder and become the victor in the next battle."

Gladias and Zeyi walked down the stairs along the tunnel. A few minutes later, they arrived at a sealed door. Zeyi knocked on the green circle beside the door with his watch. The door slowly opened.

They saw a long room with a large table at the far end. At the table sat a man in a dark cloak.

"Welcome, you two!" Deng called out.

"Good to see you again, Deng," Zeyi replied.

Gladias cleared his throat. "mi cin pin fe lo kin do," he added.

"Wow, even your accent sounds good now. Good to see you too, Gladias."

"By the way, please sit."

Gladias and Zeyi both stepped forward and sat down in two chairs opposite Deng. "So, Gladias. You called this meeting. What do you want to talk about?"

"Well, so far we haven't come up with any brilliant plan to persuade the Viridian military to cooperate with you."

"But I have a somewhat unorthodox idea for what you can do in the meantime."

"What's that?"

"Spy on us."

Deng gave Gladias a surprised look. His face became calm almost immediately, as if he had remembered that openly expressing any excitement or other unexpected emotion was incompatible with his self-image.

"I think I understand the reasoning. But I'd like to hear yours."

"The Northlanders have deeply infiltrated Viridian society. They've bought off many politicians and corrupted the military. The only institutions that seem to still resist are those with stronger privacy protections built into their mechanisms: the Order, the Atlas Foundation, and the courts. Although even within the Order, the infiltration has gone quite deep."

"So if you can spy on Viridia, maybe you can in turn spy on those spies. Find out as much as possible about where the infiltration is happening, and maybe even find ways to counter it; you could even put intelligence more directly into the hands of the public, so they have the ability to try to solve problems without going through central institutions."

"You know the risks, right?"

"If you get caught, a lot of trust between Viridia and Zego will be lost. Then we'll be completely divided, and the Northlanders win."

"So why should we accept that risk?"

"Well, first, we've already entered the late stage of the game. This is a desperate situation. As you or Zeyi might say, the ninth round of intervention."

"Second, I'm not just throwing the words 'do some espionage' at you. I'm willing to provide very specific information on how the Northlanders operate, and I can introduce a large group of Guardians who are now in contact with us, to help you track down the Northlanders more effectively."

"Third, I think we should tell Virdo and persuade him to share with me the responsibility for proposing and even running this project, if all of this gets leaked."

"I like this plan. Zeyi?"

"You're asking me?"

"Of course. You're already one of our best cryptographers, and you've been coordinating cooperation with Free City enterprises. What do you think?"

"For the past fifteen years, the security of digital devices has been very strong. Espionage mainly happens in the physical world, and the physical world is much better protected. I think we should take Gladias on a tour of some shops and wafer fabs, like you did with me back then; then together we can think about what low-profile methods we can use to obtain more Viridian intelligence."

"Actually... I think Viridia bought security cameras from Zego. These cameras are already in a lot of places, and they want to put them in more. Viridia used to require encryption restrictions on the data use of cameras in public spaces, but that regulation was watered down a few years ago—an administrative change by the Ministry of Transportation that no one noticed. Can you... put backdoors in these?"

"If it were that easy, then the Northlanders must have already infiltrated Viridia on a massive scale, right?"

"Yes?"

"Have they?"

"Right? That's what I've been trying to tell you!"

Chapter 25

Pafogai Du, Zego · 3724 Frost Hour 1

Gladias and Zeyi sat at a table in a sealed room, the tabletop serving as a screen. On the screen appeared four piles of circles.

"Alright, so what am I here for?"

"It's your turn first, so you pick a pile and take at least one circle from it. You can take more, but you must take at least one circle, and only from one pile."

"Whoever takes the last circle wins."

Gladias felt he had no strategic insight into this game at all, so he decided to learn by playing.

He tapped a circle in the upper-left box with his finger.

Zeyi responded immediately, tapping the circle at the top of the lower-right box.

Gladias decided to try something different. He tapped three circles in the lower-left box.

Zeyi responded by tapping every circle in the lower-right box except one.

Gladias tapped all the remaining circles in the lower-left box. Zeyi responded by simply tapping one circle in the upper-right box.

Gladias tapped all the remaining circles in the upper-left box. Zeyi tapped two of the three remaining circles in the upper-right box.

"Alright, I lost," Gladias admitted.

The only thing he could do next was take the last circle from either of the two piles. That would leave one circle on the board, which Zeyi could take and win.

"That's very impressive."

"This is a game we used to play as kids, especially before modern games like Mingpengtai came along."

"So this is the part where you tell me about your secret weapon?"

"You know me well. There is indeed a secret weapon. It's a simple algorithm. It requires mental math, but once you learn it, if you can do the math correctly, then as long as you can choose whether to go first or second, you will always win."

"So tell me."

"XOR the circle counts of each box. So write each count as a base-2 number. For each position, count how many have a 1 there. If there's an odd number, then in our new number, we put a 1 in that position. Otherwise, we put a 0. We'll call this the XOR sum of the board."

"Wait, slow down, give me an example."

"Let's take the board from the beginning. The counts are 3, 4, 10, 13."

"Okay."

"What's that in binary