Vitalik's Sci-Fi Novel "Snow Moon" Chapter 18

Chapter 18

Pafuge Du, Zhaige 3724, Fruit Moon 18

Gladias left the air harbor, passing through a sealed opening that immediately opened into a large black car.

Zeyi and Bai were already seated inside, Zeyi in the rear-facing seat and Bai in the forward-facing seat.

"You two must be Zeyi and Bai."

"We certainly are!" Bai replied.

"Well, it's good to finally meet you."

"Us too."

Gladias sat down to Zeyi's left.

The door closed, and the car began to accelerate.

Gladias gazed to his right, looking past Zeyi toward the car's right-side window.

The car drove out of the air harbor and soon began passing a series of shops.

Gladias immediately noticed something was off: the view through the window shifted as the car moved, but it didn't respond to Gladias himself changing his body position.

"Is that a real window?" Gladias asked.

Zeyi replied, "Sort of. But we've tightened security protocols now, and the black cars have changed their settings. You can't let light pass directly through the windows, because even if the light is dimmed, it's still two-way—a good camera could see us inside. So now it's a simulated window, using cameras to pick up the view."

"Actually, when there's only one person, it works great, because it also tracks your eyes, so it adjusts and looks more natural. But now that there are two of us, it picks me."

"Hmm."

Gladias looked out the left window instead. He shifted his body several times, testing it. The colors and depth looked somewhat unnatural, but otherwise it appeared surprisingly normal. He kept looking, paying close attention to everything he saw outside.

Many shop exteriors were painted with cartoon animals, speech bubbles containing all sorts of Zhaige text that Gladias couldn't understand at all.

Gladias could briefly see the products inside each shop: handheld devices, computer boxes, lamps, drones, sensors. A shop selling computer boxes had a sign reading "MIN KUI."

A shop selling lamps had a sign reading "GUI SAU," and most of the lamps inside were slender cylinders.

But to his surprise, only a few shops seemed to still be open.

The buildings were all one or two stories tall, with many staircases leading underground.

There were people outside, though fewer than Gladias had seen in Viridia—even though Pafuge Du clearly had a much higher population density than his own hometown.

"hun fe bin jin zo de jan li gi," Zeyi asked aloud.

"Hmm?" Gladias responded.

"Ah, sorry. I was just saying how many people are wearing neckbands."

Gladias also noticed a large number of identical black cars on the road.

"Does everyone in Pafuge Du use these black cars? Is it a privacy thing?" he asked.

"Come to think of it, no. We've been using them for a while, but it's new that so many people are using them. Just a few days ago, only half the people were using them."

They continued riding in silence.

A few minutes later, the car drove into a tunnel. Midway through, the car slowed, then stopped. Gladias could feel a slight bump, some mechanical noises, and the car seeming to move in various directions: up, sideways, then down. He looked out the window but couldn't see anything. After about half a minute, the process ended and the car seemed to accelerate forward again.

"Did we just... swap cars?"

"Swap compartments. The system waits for ten cars to arrive, randomly swaps the compartments, then everyone drives out. No one watching the exit knows which one we're in. Like a mixnet, but for people."

In less than a minute, they were out of the tunnel. Soon, the mountain pyramid of Pafuge Du's south side came into view.

"That... is an impressive structure," Gladias said.

"Heh, everyone says that. Actually, we carved it out of an existing mountain."

"Still impressive! And it's probably safer that way, if ninety or ninety-nine percent of the interior is solid rock."

"It's ninety-six point seven percent now."

"So that's one-thirtieth hollow? If a normal building is ten percent solid, its capacity would be equivalent to a normal building scaled down by a factor of three in each dimension?"

"You got it!"

"Maybe you're right, we should be impressed. It's the largest one in all of Zhaige."

The car began to slow and soon stopped. The door opened directly into the hotel.

"This is your hotel, Gladias!"

Gladias stood up, grabbed his bag, and got out of the car.

"So what's the plan?"

"Get some rest. We'll come back and meet you later, and talk more."

Gladias walked into the hotel and tapped the nearest green circle with his watch.

His watch rang. He had his room key.

Gladias looked around. Zeyi was right, he realized. Almost everyone here was already wearing a neckband.

Gladias stepped into the elevator. The doors closed. When they opened again, Gladias stepped out and into his room.

Gladias walked out the hotel's front door and looked around. He had only rested for forty minutes; Zeyi and Bai wouldn't come find him for another sixty. He planned to take a walk, to see at least this small part of Pafuge Du for himself.

He turned around. He saw the hotel address: Tankai No. 1565.

He turned right and began walking.

Almost immediately, his watch began flashing warnings at him, the "unknown" count reaching double digits. He figured it was just his Viridian watch not being updated to the latest Zhaige electronics, so he decided to ignore the warnings and keep going.

He crossed the street. He saw a black car drive past him, then slow down almost immediately. A man came out of a nearby shop carrying a large box. He set the large box on the ground beside the car. The door opened, and the driver got out, placing her own large box on the ground, exactly the same size. She proceeded to open the top of the box.

Gladias looked at the box from a few meters away and could see the top row inside contained about thirty much smaller white boxes.

The driver took out a tray holding the top row and placed it on the ground, on the steps. The man from the shop pulled out a handheld device and seemed to scan the QR codes on all the white boxes at once.

Then the driver took out a tray with the second row from the top and placed it on top of the first tray. The man from the shop scanned again.

This was repeated five more times. Afterward, the driver opened the man's large box and scanned it row by row as well.

After scanning each row, she placed the tray into her own box. Finally, she put the box back in the car and drove away.

"What happened?" Gladias asked.

"Delivery," the man replied. "High security."

The man put the trays from the steps into his own box, picked it up, hurried back into his shop, and locked the door.

Gladias realized this was a physical-object mixnet—something Zeyi had told him about. Each object passes through multiple carriers, and no one knows the source and destination. There's no way to compromise one person's device without compromising everyone's—and if you do, you'll be caught quickly.

Gladias kept walking. He turned right on Seventeenth Street, and the giant mountain pyramid of Pafuge Du appeared before him, with the path to the pyramid visible just two more streets away.

On this street, Gladias could see more shops still open. Almost every shop had a sign above its window, about half of them carefully polished and professional, the other half improvised by hand with neon lights. He saw a flower shop, still packed with customers. About twenty meters further was a clothing store. The poster outside still advertised jackets, but looking through the window inside, he could see about half the space had been hastily taken over by privacy robes. About twenty meters after that, an unmarked staircase led to a basement, and two teenage boys and a girl were climbing down.

At the top of the stairs, Gladias saw a sign. There were cute cartoon animals playing with electronics and chemistry lab equipment against a background of green trees and blue sky. In the middle of the sign, he saw a Zhaige proverb:

pa jan li sun zo

zai gau fe pa jan

go li sun zo

bai gau fe go

He wondered what it meant.

He made a mental note: since he was here, he really needed to learn those 256 Zhaige roots.

About twenty meters later, he saw another staircase leading down to what looked like an underground tea house. The decoration style of the entrance and stairs reminded Gladias of depictions he'd seen of Zhaige's medieval era when he was a child.

Soon after, Gladias reached the next street: Xinge. The sidewalk had good tree cover, enough to block his view of the giant pyramid towering before him. Here, the street intersection temporarily parted the trees, and he could see the pyramid again. He saw many people walking back and forth on the sloped walkway leading to the entrance. Most of them were wearing privacy robes. He wondered what they were doing.

He crossed the road and kept walking until he reached the next street: Zaigong. This was the last street before the mountain began. He crossed the street again and started up the slope.

About five minutes later, Gladias was high enough that he was now above Pafuge Du, able to see the rooftops of almost all the buildings. From the top, the city was a mix of concrete roofs and green trees—much greener than Liberty City, but still far less green than Viridia. He noticed a large rock nearby. He sat on it and enjoyed the view.

A few minutes later, he started heading back.

When he reached Zaigong Street, he turned left and followed the city's edge all the way to the westernmost end. He was quite pleased with this beautiful path, full of trees, that seemed to encircle the entire city. He saw many people walking and running along this path. When he reached Street 0 on the city's west side, the road turned north.

He continued along the path, walking two streets north back to Tankai, then crossed through the city gate, headed east, and returned to the hotel.

After entering the hotel, Gladias immediately turned left into the lobby restaurant. Despite being ten minutes early, he saw Zeyi and Bai already sitting at a table, looking at a handheld device. Bai looked up and waved at him.

Gladias walked to their table and sat down.

"What are you looking at?" he asked.

Bai showed him the screen.

He took the road less traveled and paved a path for all.

jan jo san sia ci pa jan li san sia te bia pin hu fe lo shun ci fi mu jan li san sia fe fi mu san sia te shun zo bia pin fe jan

"Do you know what this means?"

"Well, the first line is from Viridia."

"Indeed it is. What about the rest?"

"Not yet. I only know five Zhaige roots," Gladias laughed.

"Already mastered two percent of the language," Bai replied.

"People should dream. When one person dreams, they won't fear pain. When a hundred thousand people dream a hundred thousand dreams, pain will fear them."

"It's an ancient poem."

"It's not so different from our message."

"Indeed. Though you're paving roads, while we're here fighting for survival."

Just as she finished speaking, Zeyi and Bai simultaneously turned and waved to another person who had run up to the table.

Zeyi immediately recognized him and pulled out the remaining chair for him to sit down.

"Gladias, meet Fen."

"Nice to meet you, Fen. Sera mentioned all the good things Zeyi has said about you."

"Nice to meet you too, Gladias. Anyone Zeyi brings is a friend of mine."

"Well, I'm glad to finally see Zhaige with my own eyes."

"Fen, what's been happening in your world?" Bai interjected. "I think this is the first time we've seen you in nearly half a month."

"I'm really sorry I've been neglecting you both for so long. But thank you for asking—because I think I finally have a worthwhile answer."

Gladias, Zeyi, and Bai all turned to look at Fen.

Fen began: "You might wonder why we spend so much effort on Bansongpei. What's the point of optimizing Zhaige, optimizing measurement units, all of it, when Zhaige has so many other urgent needs—education, defense, economic development, all of it."

"I've wondered about this myself for years. It wasn't until the day Red County was attacked, when I met with Bansongpei, that I finally got the answer."

"What was the answer?" Zeyi asked.

"Zhaige is collaborative training."

Zeyi and Bai both opened their mouths.

"Think about what we're doing every time we release a new version of Zhaige."

"First, we A/B test many different versions of it. We incentivize different people to try different things and report their experiences."

"This ensures two things. First, it ensures there's public feedback throughout the process, so that when you have real people try to start doing these things, the final product is informed by what actually works."

"Second, the public feedback and the fact that the final result is the outcome of many people choosing among many different options across many different dimensions helps people accept the result. This is not surprising. Anyone who disagrees with some part of it almost always knows someone who prefers it, and can at least hear their perspective."

"Bansongpei deliberately seeks members from all walks of life—in fact, you can get bonuses for recruiting people no one else in the organization knows."

"So on the day Red County was attacked, Bansongpei met digitally and made an unprecedented decision. At least temporarily, they shelved Zhaige Version Nine. They released some basic standout changes that had been agreed upon for over a year, but that was it."

Zeyi breathed a sigh of relief.

Gladias could understand. The past month had been tense for everyone—it wasn't a good time to have everyone across the country learning a completely new version of the language.

"Instead, they decided to use the exact same mechanism, though with less public participation and more secrecy due to the special circumstances and time constraints, to coordinate a whole different set of changes across all of Zhaige."

"Have you seen how many people are now wearing neckbands and holding conversations through them? Or wearing privacy robes? Or taking black cars to and from different places? Or buying products online through the physical delivery mixnet instead of going to stores? And what you haven't seen is ten times more significant—more sensitive meetings are just happening online, and everyone is using more secure tools for everything on the internet. Blue Whale Messenger practically disappeared from Zhaige overnight."

"None of this was happening three days ago. Instead, Bansongpei had just released new privacy and security recommendations through their channel, and everyone following them was expecting news about Zhaige Version Nine. About five percent of people saw these recommendations at the same time. They were surprised, but they read and understood the reasoning, and respected the people who made the decision. Most of them have already changed their behavior in at least one major way, and even two and a half percent is enough to spark a trend that's now sweeping across all of Zhaige."

Fen grew more excited as he continued.

"Northerners often talk about a person's intelligence score, and how society should be governed by those with the highest scores. Some Viridian scholars say we should also take emotional intelligence scores seriously—though they always have trouble getting people to actually do anything, rather than just nodding in agreement with the statement."

"But they're completely missing a third category. Coordination score. Coordination score isn't a person's property—it's the property of an entire community. It's a community's ability to make collective decisions, to choose positive-sum cooperation over zero-sum competition, even when individuals are at risk, and to jump from bad equilibria to better ones."

"Northerners believe this can only be done with a strong leader everyone bows down to. But we Zhaige