Chapter 13: Knowing A Person

Having sent out the resume, she opened the blog she had started yesterday. Her blog username was "Knowing A Person." The phrase "Knowing a person for such a long time" was from a poem called "The Eternal Love." Her name Sophia had come from this poem. She left out the last five words and used the front three words as her nickname.

She clicked through to the tournament website. It was still too early to start the first stage. The competition interface had not yet opened up, but there was a game mode, which allowed players to play with each other for fun. It was always available.

Sophia Green had not played chess for a long time. She suddenly felt nervous, she had only played chess with Albert Pearson in the lab and once, with a player online. She began to doubt her chess skills.

She had some free time, so she opened a game and clicked "Start." She wanted to play a game of chess with someone to test her level.

***

Toby Damon received a call from Grey Cooper. He didn't want to answer it. But he answered the phone out of courtesy. After all, Grey Cooper was the boss of a big company. He didn't want to offend him.

"Mr. Damon. We haven't spoken for a long time." Grey said, "but I would like to ask you for a favor, OK?"

Toby frowned, "I'm just a chess player. What can I do for you?"

Grey Cooper could hear the reluctance in his tone, but he charged on cheerfully, "Well, a friend of mine has sponsored an online chess contest. He wants to make the whole thing look a bit more formal. So I thought it would be good to have a famous chess player as one of the competitors. You're the top expert in the country, and we were wondering if we could use your name? You don't have to do anything, just forward a blog message and play a couple of games."

In fact, Albert Pearson hadn't asked him to do anything of the kind. But he had asked Albert to check his business accounts, a very troublesome and tricky affair, and Albert had done it all overnight without asking for anything in return. The detailed breakdown had been sent to him early that morning.

Sure enough, the accounts had been altered, and it had been done by someone inside his company, so skillfully that it would have been hard for even a professional to discover it. Fortunately, he had such an amazing friend like Albert Pearson, who was able to find the problem in time.

Albert had done him such a huge favor, and, as a friend, he felt he would be indebted to him if he did nothing. But Albert Pearson didn't need anything from him, so this was all he could think of.

Toby Damon didn't like Grey Cooper. Last time, Grey Cooper asked him for a favor, it had been to "guide" his friend through a chess game. For the sake of the money he was offered, he had agreed.

He had gone to Mr. Pearson's house and played a game of chess with him. Mr. Pearson was very good, but Toby Damon was an international chess player, so he finally won.

Mr. Pearson had lost but laughed it off, "You really know how to play chess, Mr. Damon. I have a friend who also plays chess. But she is not here now. Can you play a game of chess with her online? She usually plays chess with me and wins every time. She must be very bored."

Toby Damon also played chess on the internet. Chess was available on many game platforms, and, like a chess player, he often played online and knew how it worked. As Mr. Pearson had made the request, he had just agreed.

Mr. Pearson made a phone call and asked his friend to go online and open the online game interface.

Toby Damon thought at first that he could finish it in a few minutes. But as he played, he got more and more thrilled. The way his opponent played was quite odd, and she didn't seem to have any clear strategy or training. But each move implied a hint as if she had seen through the next dozen steps. He finally lost.

He had heard that a computer program had beaten the world champion in Go recently. So he suspected that his opponent was not a real person but a computer program. If the Go programming could beat a world champion, it wouldn't be a surprise if a computer could beat him.

But Mr. Pearson would not admit it so Toby could do nothing but leave, feeling angry and cheated.

Because of that incident, Toby Damon didn't like or trust Grey Cooper and didn't want to work with him again.

The silence on the phone persisted as Grey waited for Toby's response. So finally, he played his trump card.

"Of course, it's not a free favor. How about fifteen thousand dollars as a prize? That's open to negotiation if you're not satisfied."

Toby Damon was not a rich man. Fifteen thousand dollars wasn't a small sum of money to him. He thought about it and nodded, "Fine. But… You're not going to end up using a computer program to win the championship, are you? That would be so unfair! If it came out, it would affect my reputation!"

It's a despicable thing to win a prize with a computer program under the guise of a real person.

Grey Cooper didn't know what to say, "Of course not! There's no chess programming that good anyway! That's just Go where they can do that, right? It would cost a lot of money to build that. Chess isn't that popular in this country. I wouldn't spend that kind of money on it. Besides, why would I bother?"

Toby Damon was dubious. But for the sake of the reward, he finally agreed.

But he was still not at ease. He opened the computer, signed up for an account, and entered the game interface. He wanted to check if there was any chess programming at work.

He clicked, "start." The system automatically assigned him an opponent named "Knowing A Person." The game was on.