Jiang Fuyue returned the hug. “Long time no see.”
Off to the side, Peter was already stunned. While his Chinese wasn’t great, he could still recognize the pronunciation of “Chou.”
Did Xu really just call a girl “Chou”? Or had “Chou” become as common as names like John or Tony—anyone could use it?
“Oh, Xu! You’re joking again, aren’t you? Come on, introduce me properly. Don’t tell me this beautiful young lady is supposed to be Chou! That would be absolutely ridiculous!”
Xu Kaiqing gave him a faintly amused look. “Who’s joking with you?”
“Wait, you’re not?!” Peter waved his hands dramatically. “You literally just called her Chou. If that’s not messing with me, what is?”
Xu Kaiqing: “What if she is Chou?”
“No, no, no. That’s not funny at all.”
Just then, Jiang Fuyue stepped forward and patted Peter on the shoulder. “Hey, finally nice to meet you, Peter Drucker.”
Hiss—
“You know me? Xu told you? Oh no, don’t tell me—you’re actually Chou?! I’ll have a complete meltdown!”
Jiang Fuyue spread her hands and shrugged. “I’m afraid so.”
Peter’s expression went from disbelief to outright protest. “Why did you turn into a girl?! How can you be a girl?! Xu, please tell me this is some absurd prank!”
But Jiang Fuyue blinked innocently. “Did I ever say I was a man?”
Uh…
Come to think of it—she never did!
Still, Peter was skeptical. Or more accurately—he couldn’t believe that the powerful, unmatched Chou turned out to be such a young girl.
It was utterly insane!
“You, beautiful miss—if you claim to be Chou, then surely you remember our discussion about Hilary Putnam’s thought experiment, the one called Water Flowers. Do you recall it?”
Jiang Fuyue raised a brow. “I don’t remember anything called Water Flowers. But I do know another wild thought experiment by Hilary Putnam, called—”
She enunciated each word clearly: “Brain in a vat.”
Peter’s aged eyes narrowed, flashing with sharpness and cunning that didn’t match his usual goofy demeanor: “Brain in a vat: The idea is that a person—say, yourself—is subjected to surgery by a mad scientist, your brain removed and placed in a vat of life-sustaining nutrient fluid. The brain’s nerve endings are connected to a computer that feeds it information simulating normal experience. From the brain’s perspective, everything seems real—people, objects, the sky—it can feel its body, even be fed memories. It might even think it’s reading a fascinating yet absurd piece of writing right now.[1]”
Jiang Fuyue smiled and continued where he left off:
“To that brain, the world appears perfectly normal because the computer is simulating all the signals it expects. So the question becomes—if all the signals are identical to real life, how could the brain ever realize it’s in a simulation?”
Peter was stunned on the spot.
Twenty years ago, he and Chou had had this exact conversation in a private chat on the S-SA intranet. Even the phrasing was eerily similar.
The details were so specific—not even Xu Kaiqing could’ve known them.
So—
“Oh my God! You really are Chou?! My hero all this time is actually a girl?! Oh dear Lord, this is unbelievable!”
As he spoke, he threw his arms wide open, ready to give her a giant hug.
Jiang Fuyue’s scalp tingled. She quickly dodged. “Actually, there’s a thousand-year-old Chinese fable that also illustrates this hypothesis quite well.”
Peter’s eyes lit up. “What fable?!”
“From Zhuangzi: Discussion on Making All Things Equal. It goes: ‘Once Zhuang Zhou dreamt he was a butterfly, fluttering and carefree, unaware that he was Zhou. Then he awoke, and realized he was Zhou. Was it Zhou dreaming of being a butterfly, or the butterfly dreaming of being Zhou?’”
Peter: “?” What is she talking about?
Xu Kaiqing: “?” As a Chinese person, I’m wondering if I even understand Chinese anymore…
Jiang Fuyue wasn’t about to let them suffer too long. She explained: “Zhuang Zhou dreams of being a butterfly. But was he dreaming of becoming a butterfly, or was the butterfly dreaming of becoming him? Reality and illusion intertwine, layer upon layer, spawning multi-dimensional spaces. Isn’t that similar to Einstein’s theory of relativity? Of course, that’s just my personal take.”
She rattled off this entire explanation, and—boom—Peter’s eyes were practically sparkling like stars.
He didn’t understand the Chinese, but that didn’t matter. He just shouted, “666!” like a true fan.
After all, Chou was never not amazing.
Her idol glow was blinding.
Xu Kaiqing raised his chin slightly, a touch smug: “Now do you believe me, old Pete?”
“Heh…” Peter looked at him like, Don’t act like you came up with any of that.
“I say, you two need to stop.” Jiang Fuyue cut off the bickering before it could start again. Then she patted the hood of the understatedly luxurious Cullinan, waved her hand coolly—
“Come on, I’ll take you to meet a friend!”
