Serial Fiction

Suckers’ Roulette | Chapter 3.1

Capstone Proposal

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Bellevue, Washington, USA. September, 2109

Initially, Tommy’s hypothesis regarding Daniel Young and DY3x seemed absurd—because it was. The idea of Daniel Young being 140 years old defied logic; no one had ever surpassed 122, even with advanced rejuvenation methods. Yet, Sarah's intrigue compelled her to investigate. Upon visiting DY3x.net, she anticipated stumbling upon something trivial, perhaps even a prank by Tommy. To her surprise, the blog was a rich tapestry of ten years’ worth of posts covering U.S. law, physics, software engineering, and cryptography.

Sarah immersed herself in the material, mirroring the site on her tablet and dissecting its contents. She organized the already categorized posts by topic and converted them into raw text, ready for analysis.

The ensuing month was a whirlwind of productivity, reminiscent of her early career days. Back then, she had eagerly joined a start-up, captivated by the founders' vision of a revolutionary educational AI designed to help teachers "debug" students' flawed thinking. Nineteen arduous months later, she received a handful of worthless shares before the company pivoted to develop staff-management AI for fast-food chains. A year later, it collapsed, leaving her with bittersweet memories.

This past month mirrored that experience. With Tommy away at Stanford and their son touring Asia, Sarah found herself alone in their home. She settled into a pattern of working late into the night, only to collapse into bed as dawn approached, waking six hours later, driven by an insatiable desire to dive back into her work.

Now, her analysis was complete.

Stepping out into the cul-de-sac at the end of 107th Ave SE, she walked toward the old high school, knowing that attempting to sleep would only lead to dreams of her work. Instead, she sought fresh air. The sun had yet to rise, and the autumn mist curled around the fir trees, merging into the slate sky. The mid-century homes lining her street slumbered in darkness, having evaded the demolition frenzy of the early 2000s. Now, they stood as historic landmarks. As she walked, she pondered their pasts—what life was like when they were new, the laughter of children playing in the streets, and if Daniel Young had once lived in such a house with his siblings during the 1970s and 80s, without the distractions of modern technology. Young had mentioned growing up on a block with thirty-five other children, a concept that seemed almost unimaginable to Sarah, who suspected none lived on her street now.

Tommy, an early riser, would likely be awake. She texted him while walking, attaching her proposal draft.

> Sarah: Hey, take a look at this, lemme know what you think.

As she continued her stroll, she navigated SE 10th St and 108th St, heading south. Through a gap in the trees, she glimpsed the sparse traffic on the 405—mostly trucks, with a few buses and cars. The soft sounds of tires on wet pavement and the hum of larger vehicles reached her from a distance.

Sarah had visited Tommy at Stanford twice, recalling the sprawling brown hills surrounding the campus and the woman who sat next to him during a meal with his classmates. The woman had touched Tommy's arm frequently, and surprisingly, Sarah felt no jealousy. She found the woman charming, with her expressive eyes and passion for the law. Sarah envied Tommy's experience of that exhilarating, fresh love.

Thoughts of divorce had crossed Sarah's mind, but there was no urgency. Their home was paid off, and their savings could cover taxes and maintenance for years. Both were frugal, and the idea of dividing their assets loomed as a daunting task neither wished to tackle. When Tommy returned during breaks, it felt like a reunion of old friends and lovers—shared laughter over wine and cozy mornings tangled in sheets. Yet when he departed, Sarah felt no sadness.

Arriving at Mercer Slough's trailhead, the sky had transformed from black to gray. The mist had thickened into fog, enveloping the wetlands. Within the confines of a post-and-rail fence, rows of blueberry plants faded into the gray mist. The boardwalk trail, which wound around the farm, vanished from sight a few meters ahead.

A notification chimed from her pocket, bringing a smile to her face.

> Tomasz: You’re up early.

> Sarah: Still up, actually.

> Tomasz: Wow.

> Sarah: Take a look at that doc I sent.

> Tomasz: What is it?

> Sarah: My capstone project proposal. I think you’ll like it.

> Tomasz: Tell me.

> Sarah: DY3x. He’s your guy. Like you said. I don’t know how he’s alive, but I’m sure it’s him.

> Tomasz: I knew it!

> Sarah: Can you look through it and let me know if it all makes sense? It needs enough detail to convince an expert but should also be accessible to a layperson.

Standing on the wooden footbridge that led from the berry fields over the slough and into the woods, she paused. The fog enveloped her, making her hesitate between venturing into the woods or returning home.

Moments later, Tommy texted again.

> Tomasz: I think I understand the word histograms. The words DY3x uses match Young’s. But what’s an n-gram?

> Sarah: A sequence of words that appear together in order. A bi-gram is two words, a tri-gram is three, and so on. So DY3x uses not just the same words but the same combinations of words.

Beginning her analysis with the legal texts, Sarah found the most material available. Along with the DY3x blog, she had access to every federal judge's opinions from the past century. A straightforward statistical n-gram analysis revealed that DY3x’s legal writings bore more resemblance to Daniel Young’s opinions than to any other judge's in the last century.

> Tomasz: I’m just skimming now; can you update me on the models?

> Sarah: Sure. The word statistics are suggestive but not entirely convincing on their own. I wanted stronger evidence. I demonstrated that an AI model capable of identifying Daniel Young’s work also recognized DY3x’s writings.

> I trained a model to distinguish Young’s legal opinions from a corpus of various authors.

> When I included DY3x’s legal writings, it identified them easily.

> Tomasz: Nice.

> Sarah: It wasn’t even challenging. The basic sequence learner in my text analysis library accomplished it with a simple push of a button.

> Tomasz: Whatever that means.

> Sarah: Never mind. It was easy. Better yet, a model designed to separate the DY3x blog from other blogs also identified Daniel Young’s doctoral dissertation among similar ones, though the separation wasn’t as clear-cut as with the legal texts.

> Tomasz: What about the physics posts?

> Sarah: They’re tricky. There’s no ground truth to compare against.

> Tomasz: I don’t understand any of the physics posts anyway.

> Sarah: Me neither.

The theoretical physics posts posed a challenge. Daniel Young had not published in that field, while DY3x had written about it and even shared three scholarly articles on ArXiv. Sarah hadn’t fully grasped them, but she found a somewhat comprehensible summary on a physics blog. From what she gathered, DY3x proposed a theory uniting the em-drive with dark matter. The em-drive, a reactionless thruster, had powered many interplanetary spacecraft for decades, yet the physics behind it remained hotly debated. Dark matter, the elusive substance that supposedly clarified gravitational anomalies in stellar movements, had resisted a definitive explanation for over a century.

Comments on the blog suggested that DY3x’s theory did not so much explain dark matter as render it unnecessary for understanding observations of stars and galaxies. This theory polarized the physics community. One faction dismissed it as pseudoscience, while a smaller group of respected theorists advocated for its merits despite its unconventional origin. DY3x remained elusive, refusing public appearances at conferences, yet defended his work passionately online.

> Sarah: Anyway, everything else you sent checks out, including that quote about retiring to eat cheese and drink wine on the terrasse.

> I’m confident that the writer of the legal content is Daniel Young.

> By the way, the first blog post about Provence, “Sunset on the Luberon”? I think it’s sweet and melancholic—a love letter to a place from someone preparing to leave forever.

> Tomasz: It’s still strange. It doesn’t match the tone of the rest of the blog. Why did he even start writing it unless he anticipated living?

> Sarah: Who knows? I can’t predict how I’ll feel when my time comes. Maybe he wrote it for himself and posted it later out of affection.

> Tomasz: idk. Hey, I have to go. I’ll try to read your document tonight and call you when I can.

> Sarah: k, bye.

Dawn had arrived somewhere above the dissipating fog. Across the slough, past the bridge’s end, the trail vanished into the woods. Sarah yearned to lose herself in those dark paths but turned back toward home instead. She needed rest and to arrange a meeting with her advisor.

Continued in Chapter 3.2.

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