Technology invades the modern world

Chapter 494 No Chance
A huge grid of fine lines occupies the entire area of ​​the screen.

Technology or rules can be inspired by The Man in the High Castle, but how do you get inspiration for this?

"What is this?" This question echoed in the minds of all the researchers present.

"A grid? A coordinate system? Some kind of circuit diagram?"

Huang Kun quickly dismissed his guess, stating that the shape did not conform to any known engineering or physical standards.

Just then, Wu Xijiu weakly said, "19 times 19."

Huang Kun immediately realized: "You mean a Go board?"

Wu Xijiu nodded: "That's right, this is a Go board!"

The blinking cursor is telling us to place our piece!

Dean Qian made a quick decision: "Who knows how to play Go? Whoever sits on the control panel now and plays a game against it."

This makes perfect sense; it challenges humanity with the most difficult board game on the planet.

Go is pure logic and strategy; it represents the pinnacle of civilization's wisdom.

It avoids language barriers.

Is it strange that an alien civilization that once crashed on Earth knows about Go?

If we can find alien debris, why can't alien civilizations understand Earth's culture?
What further confirmed Dean Qian's suspicions was the Technology Ark, the thing IBM was working on in New York.

Tech Ark initially showcased its chess-playing AI, demonstrating its technological prowess through chess games.

Where did IBM and Lin Ran get their inspiration? Wasn't it from alien debris?

From China's perspective, that's how things are.

America played chess, so it's not surprising that alien civilizations are now directly engaging in the most difficult game of Go.

After discussing it privately for a while, they said, "We're all terrible players right now. I'll go and call Jiang Boju over. He's the champion of the District 51 Go tournament."

"Okay, we need to hurry!" Dean Qian glanced at the screen and saw that there was no countdown. He nodded.

After receiving the notification, Jiang Boju arrived at the office area, which he had never set foot in before, feeling both excited and apprehensive.

He thought he was about to get access to Area 51's core secrets, and thought that all his hard work and efforts to get closer to them over the years had not been in vain.

Upon arriving at a windowless room and seeing that it was filled with bigwigs from Area 51, Jiang Boju became even more certain of this.

“Come on, Boju, your task is to win this game of chess.”

Dean Qian didn't waste any more words. He simply waved his hand, instructing the staff to bring Jiang Boju to the display screen.

This was far from what Jiang Boju had expected; he thought he would be able to access the core secrets of Area 51.

You can't exactly say that the core secret of Area 51 is playing Go in front of a computer screen, can you?

In this timeline of Area 51, computers are nothing unusual.

They even have dedicated computer centers where they can use minicomputers.

Secondary schools in Area 51 have dedicated computer use courses that teach students how to use computers for numerical calculations.

Jiang Boju himself witnessed firsthand the process of how the display materials in Area 51 evolved from cathode ray tubes to LED light-emitting diodes.

Jiang Boju was stunned. He looked at the screen in the direction Dean Qian was pointing.

He originally thought he would be facing a blackboard full of complex data and formulas, or a punched paper tape waiting for him to perform extremely difficult mathematical model calculations.

Before him was only a grid.

If Dean Qian hadn't said it was Go, he would have thought it was some unknown image.

This was far from what Jiang Boju had expected. He wasn't there to calculate missile trajectories or crack codes; his mission was to play a game of chess?

"Dean, what kind of chess game is this? Who is the opponent?" Jiang Boju asked cautiously.

Dean Qian's expression was serious. He didn't answer directly, but pointed to the white piece on the screen that had started to flash. "I don't know, but that's not important. What's important is that you win."

Jiang Boju's heart clenched suddenly.

He didn't know who his opponent was, nor did he know the consequences of winning or losing, but he knew that the expressions on the faces of these experts indicated that this game was of paramount importance.

He took a deep breath, sat down at the simple control panel, and slowly moved his fingers toward the mouse.

It turned out that the mouse was completely useless.

The arrow keys on the keyboard also have no effect.

Neither the mouse nor the keyboard can move the cursor.

"Let's try using binary to represent coordinates," Dean Qian decided immediately.

No one here finds it strange. It would be strange if the signals sent by our mouse and keyboard could establish a direct connection with aliens and even be able to read them.

The mouse and keyboard—the latter was invented by Americans a long time ago, while America had a prototype of the former in 1963, and Area 51 also made a similar thing after its establishment.

Currently, China is the country with the highest global mouse sales. Thanks to its advanced design, China has packaged and sold this thing all over the world, almost giving it away.

Although the total sales worldwide were only about 100,000 units, the market was only that big, and personal computers were not yet widespread.

But even on Earth, there isn't a unified standard for mouse input. If aliens could understand what the signals from a Chinese mouse meant, everyone here would be questioning their existence.

Do we have an inside man who can make contact with aliens, or are aliens able to infiltrate our network and go to such great lengths to make contact with the Chinese?
"Okay, Boju, tell me where you want to get off."

Jiang Boju then realized that something was wrong.

This is too strange.

Isn't this the game-playing program you developed?
However, he didn't panic, his expression remaining calm: "Alright, the first move, black, lands at the star point in the lower right corner, which is 4, 16."

He chose a three-star opening, a common and ambitious strategy.

After the signal was sent out, a black circle appeared in the lower right corner of the screen, next to the star.

"It really is Go!"

"It really is Go. We need to practice more. This is Go."

"Shh! Keep your voice down, Boju is still playing chess."

After a brief period of noise, the room fell silent again, so quiet that only Jiang Boju's voice and the sound of staff typing on keyboards to send signals into space could be heard.

He had no idea that he was playing a game of chess with aliens; all he knew was that the game was very important.

When the first black piece appeared, the white piece reacted quickly and swiftly moved to the star position in the upper left corner.

Then a countdown appeared in the upper right corner of the screen: 00:05:00.

"Five minutes? Boju, you probably only have five minutes to think."

Everyone present felt a chill run down their spines; they only had five minutes to think, which meant the difficulty of the game had increased again.

Jiang Boju began to carefully examine the white piece. The white piece responded in the most symmetrical way, but the placement was slightly inward, and the intention was unclear.

Jiang Boju continued his strategy, deploying his formation in the central area according to the Three Stars formation.

As the game entered the middle stage, Jiang Boju began to adopt an aggressive playing style.

He attempted to corner the opponent's pieces, forcing the white pieces to settle into a fixed position, thereby establishing his own territorial advantage.

However, the white pieces' responses began to become strange and unpredictable.

When Jiang Boju tentatively placed a corner at position 3,15 below, the white pieces did not choose the common option of jumping or retreating, but instead adopted an extremely rare, even somewhat amateurish, move at the top, directly placing a high point at position 1,19.

"What kind of path is this?" Jiang Boju was shocked.

In human Go theory, this move is either an extremely clever sacrifice to lure the enemy, or a foolish and wicked move.

He chose to pursue Bai Zi.

He believed that the white piece had left a weak gap in the upper left corner, so he decided to invade it.

After Jiang Boju finished his first few strikes, he suddenly felt a chill.

Bai Zi did not defend or counterattack in the area he attacked, but instead concentrated all his power on the right edge.

The way White moves seems to completely ignore the concepts of critical points and tesuji in human Go.

Soon, Jiang Boju began to despair.

He discovered that every seemingly correct move he made was unknowingly trapping him in a structurally flawed game.

He tried to make a living group in the lower left corner, but the white pieces, despite appearing to be far from the area he wanted to make a living group, completed a blockade on the other side of the board with terrifying calculation precision.

When he turned back to try and fix the bottom left corner, he found that he had very little energy left.

By the 56th move, Jiang Boju was on the verge of collapse.

He discovered that his three-star outer force had been completely dismantled by Bai Zi using an algorithm he had never seen before.

His territory was pitifully small, and what was even more alarming was that almost none of the black stones on the board were truly alive.

It was the dead of winter, and the room was heated by radiators, but he was still sweating profusely.

Sweat soaked through his back.

"Something's not right. This is unlike any other chess record I've ever seen!"

When dogs appeared in the 70s, it wasn't just a matter of lowering the game's level; it was like Mike Tyson beating up a kindergarten.

Time passed little by little.

The 5-minute countdown in the upper right corner is not the kind of countdown that refreshes numbers like an hourglass.

It's not that satellite networks can't do it, but rather that China's technological adaptability isn't high enough; their signal reception and conversion speeds aren't fast enough.

The countdown they saw was intermittent.

类似于前脚是00:05:00，后脚变成了00:04:37。

In any case, time eventually returns to zero, bit by bit.

No one reminded Jiang Boju that time was running out.

Anyone with even a little knowledge of the game could tell from the opponent's expression and the constantly disappearing black pieces that Jiang Boju had no chance of winning against this opponent.

No one was optimistic that just anyone could win the game.

Fortunately, there is still time and opportunity; we can come again in 24 hours.

Judging from what they had just witnessed, the gap between Jiang Boju and his opponent was quite large, so large that they couldn't quite put their finger on how big the gap was.

The other party doesn't even need to think; give you five minutes, and their response is instantaneous.

The moment the countdown reached zero, the chessboard image on the screen collapsed instantly. All the black and white pieces, including the 19x19 grid, turned into green pixels and then vanished into nothingness.

The entire animation effect is presented on the screen in a fragmented manner.

Finally, a string of cold numbers appeared on the screen:

"24:00:00"

Jiang Boju slumped into his chair, dejected: "There was no chance of winning, not a chance of winning from beginning to end."

Dean Qian then turned to the side and asked, "Was it written down?"

The staff member replied, "The whole process was recorded."

Dean Qian's face turned ashen. He had finally understood that he needed to win this game to have any chance of moving on to the next stage.

Huang Kun walked up behind Jiang Boju, patted him on the shoulder, and said in a complicated tone, "Boju, this is not your fault, this is not just your win or loss."

Jiang Boju was still staring at the countdown on the screen, his eyes bloodshot.

His mind kept replaying Bai Zi's unusual yet deadly moves.

For the first time, he realized how vulnerable he was.

"Dean," Jiang Boju's voice was filled with resentment, "who is this? Which chess player is playing against me remotely? Or is it an artificial intelligence program you developed?"

Dean Qian shook his head, then pointed to the sky: "Aliens."

Jiang Boju was utterly shocked. "Aliens?"

Dean Qian nodded: "That's right, it's a signal from outer space. We discovered this after interpreting it."

Jiang Boju originally wanted to play another game, but now he has no such intention.

Because he understood the importance of this game.

"Dean, I don't understand its style. Its playing style is different from all the chess records I've seen in Yanjing."

The gap between me and it is probably even greater than the gap between me and Chen Zude.

The whole process wasn't playing chess; it was teaching us a lesson, and I didn't understand any of it. I couldn't even understand the moves.

We must invite Chen Zude; he's the only one who has a chance of winning.

The National Go Individual Championship has been held since 1957. Initially, it was held annually, but since 1960, it has been held biennially, using the Swiss system.

In the absence of numerous news-heavy Go tournaments and the Chinese Go League, this was the most important Go event in China.

Chen Zude has won the championship four times in a row, and he is also far ahead of other Go players of this era.

Dean Qian looked at the countdown and knew they had lost 24 precious hours.

He immediately ordered:
"I will contact Yanjing immediately and activate the highest level of authority. We need to contact not only Chen Zude, but all the Go masters in the country to form a national-level Go think tank."

Before the next cycle begins, we must find someone who can rival this alien chess player.

(End of this chapter)