Chapter 12: Underground dynamics

“Welcome to the Underground Research Institute by Dr. Chen et al.! I am indeed Dr. Chen. The current challenge is to dig a 500-meter hole!”

Dr. Chen was a plump mandarin emanating joyous energy. His presence filled the room like heated gas particles, bouncing excitedly among contestants.

“You may dig alone, or team up—with a maximum of three per team.”

“Several awards are possible:

• Survival of the fittest: The first one to the finish line wins!

• Divergent dimension: For those who spiral downwards most creatively.

• Most scalable: Those who use the best descent strategy applicable to other holes in the area.

• Special award: There are no criteria for this. It’s up to Dr. Zhang et al. to decide. And of course, with some emotional bias.

Now for 15-second intros!” Dr. Chen slid slickly aside and invited contestants up the stage—an inconspicuous dirt mound.

A large Indian pineapple with exploding hair stepped onto the mound. “Hello, my name is Rahul.” He announced, crossing his arms. “I know how to use 10 types of shovels and drills. I have been a professional hole digger for 5 years.” This was factual rather than emotional, and Rahul thought smiling was redundant.

Next, a small little persimmon rolled toward the stage. “I’m Rivera!” She said, adding in a nervous giggle.

“I’m a microorganism interpretability researcher; I published several papers on microbial decision-making, under well-defined conditions. My recent paper had the lowest gene-expression noise ratio in the existing literature.”

Rivera loved optimization so much that she became part of it through only 25 words in 15 seconds!

However, her algorithm failed to consider normative expectations—She fidgeted 10 times, made eye contact 15% of the time, and used facial expressions 0 times through the 15 seconds.

A mochi cuboid in a mysterious dark cloak stepped into the line and introduced herself as “Lynn, the enabler of human synchroneity, aiming to eradicate the collective suffering of 9 billion humans.”

She spoke with a voice like warm dark chocolate. “Diving downwards has unbound potential to investigate team dynamics as an analogy to civilization. I’m searching for a teammate to create a new theory of human synchronicity today. Now, what have I done before?” She continued, ignoring Dr. Chen repeatedly tapping his wristwatch and giving her impatient looks.

The next entity in line introduced himself and so on. All these entities stood chaotically in this little hovel, bathing in sunlight from 5 meters below ground.

During the middle of the contest, there’ll be a speaker from this big tech company! Dr. Chen announced, waving his hands high in the air. So, please stay! Also, I should mention there is no elevator up! And no bathrooms, food breaks, or beds. We wanted this to be an intensive, immersive experience and not distract our participants!

Tri, our prime persimmon protagonist, thought Rivera was a trustworthy persimmon like his sister. They would have complementary skill sets in the team.

He shifted towards Rivera and casually mentioned: “This hovel reminded me of my amphibian lab, where I was deriving various peptides from frog serum. We’re drafting a paper right now.”

“Oh yeah? That’s so cool!” Rivera replied, just like his sister—who never uses facial expressions and looks inattentive in conversations. But his sister would’ve continued the conversation. He suddenly realized that, by merely smiling, one took up less social space.

Tri continued to signal his status as a prime persimmon. “A friend came over recently and we made bioplastics for under $1. Need to be careful not to suffocate the frogs.”

Tri and Rivera chit-chatted and found out they both were involved with Thinking Reed during childhood. Tri asked Rivera about the downfall of Thinking Reed.

“I don’t know really,” Rivera remarked, “I grew up on that corner of the internet. If anything, there wouldn’t be significant backlash! There are not enough entities. Well maybe there are, but still, there would be few defects and even fewer of them get public attention. It would just be, fading off slowly.”

Rivera continued, “Y’know, the average member age has been climbing over the last 10 years! Sorry, I will be back in a bit.”

Tri found a grad student studying insect microsolidarity.

The student mentioned he had been in grad school for 17 years; Despite this, he was probably a better teammate than Rahul, who appeared too pompous; And Lynn, who hadn’t stopped rambling since her 15-second intro.

Tri thought maybe the grad student was knowledgeable and could analyze some fungus.

More than “a bit” passed. “Rivera, we ought to start digging. Other teams are already 10 meters down!” Tri messaged her on Slack.

Rivera appeared online but never replied.

Tri was confused as to why that is.

“Yeah, they ghost sometimes,” The grad student remarked. Tri imagined in a perfect world, entities would keep their promises, and he would’ve published n many papers by now. His sister would glow at this idea and imagine all kinds of counterfactual worlds. But there’s no point in daydreaming, he thought.

Half an hour later, the grad student complained that his back hurt too much and lay down. Tri walked around to check out adjacent holes.

He saw a team huddling around a timeline for the contest, creating phases and working backwards. Tri observed in the background. On his way out, he bumped into something.

“Ahhh!” A voice yelped. The little cauliflower was shoving dirt into a pocket of air and the dirt disappeared. Tri noticed the dirt emerged at the bottom of team Lynn’s hole and raised his eyebrows.

Tri believed things within his sphere of opinions with a certain extrapolation rate to accommodate new ones. However, this phenomenon was way outside, so Tri rejected it.

However, noise interfered with his opinion radius. Lynn stepped back! She paused, looked up and blinked a few times. When nothing happened, she put down her shovel.

“Ugh, that is unethical, rude and accusative of you!” A voice and a terrible smell came from their group. A stinky durian fruit just exploded in anger and pointed his fingers at Lynn. “Hole-digging contests are a place of collaboration. You ought to keep your promises even if you find supposedly ‘better’ teammates.”

His voice had a melodic lilt, “Obviously. You left me with no other open team. You hurt my feelings. Have you considered what I’m supposed to do now? Or are you too busy playing your own mind games?”

He looked Lynn in the eye. “You’re kicking me out of the team because I didn’t know how to use a boroscope! Do you know how ridiculous this sounds?”

Lynn explained that everyone uses boroscopes nowadays, and that “you can catch bugs easily and be more productive!”

The yelling durian entered a fit. “Why can’t I ever find a normal team that actually makes progress? You are—” He rolled forward, about to spike her when Lynn called out, “You unstable extrovert! Calm yourself! Have you considered that you’re the common denominator between all of your failures!”

Rahul stared at them, with no expression. He said nothing and continued digging.

In another hole, three socially anxious entities sat in complete silence.

Should I stay or should I go? The triangle wondered. She stood up, confused. Then she sat down. She wanted to sketch a decision tree, but she would need a branch to sketch on the ground. The message would be public. So she sat down thinking, tilting her head up. Leaving has a horrible worst-case scenario of digging individually. Restarting in a digging competition lowers the winning probability.

What was the weird dance? Am I missing out on a joke? Is it a TikTok trend? The watermelon was competent was bad at socializing. The yelling guy just got kicked out of his team! If the watermelon asks, he also risks getting kicked out of the team for causing inconvenience. He started mentally recalling the events of the day. There wasn’t anything important. Too long had already passed. To compensate, he started brainstorming competition strategies. Watermelon faked composure and glanced at the cantaloupe for her input.

The cantaloupe noticed that the triangle attempted to leave and the watermelon wiggled uncomfortably, looking at her. The cantaloupe was a beginner at hole digging, while the triangle and the watermelon were both seasoned. Maybe it was an established signal that they didn’t want any amateurs here. That poor guy who didn’t know how to use a horoscope! Oh god! What should I do? The cantaloupe started sweating. However, I need to gather more information before I can make an informed decision.

The decision cycle was too long, equivalent to the time for Rahul to dig 100 meters. Three of them sulked in unoptimal equilibria.

It seemed that Rahul was the first place with 100 meters down.

Meanwhile, Rivera was re-evaluating their life choices. Practicing utilitarianism of sorts, she saw Rahul and his teammate making a lot of progress and went up to greet them. Rahul generated a lot of gravity. She witnessed all three of them on some sine graph of energy, when one was down, the other two were up and they progressed consistently.

Back at hole #1, Tri saw the grad student frantically swinging his arms. “There was a team that made timelines, worked backwards and stuff.” said the grad student. “I just wanted to build.” He was covered in sweat and dirt. Against the student’s intuition, there was so much movement, but nothing got done. Tri shook his head.

It was 2 am, time for the secret speaker! Dr. Chen pulled out his phone and saw a text.

“Sorry, my cat died. Can’t come.” Dr. Chen thought it was a strange and horrendous excuse. He quickly texted 10 other people. 30 minutes have passed. Droplets of sweat emerged on his forehead and there was no reply.

“Oh bruh, what a scam!” A participant complained. Another guy around him went “I know right?”. Their agreement rippled through the crowd like aligned spins in a ferromagnet. The crowd became magnetized with dissatisfaction and started heading out. “You giving up already?” Rahul asked provocatively. Weary and unable to find an elevator, they turned back to Dr. Chen who began glowing with joy at the newly surfaced consensus

“It’s time! Hey everyone!” Dr. Chen announced on a dirt bump, ringing a little bell enthusiastically. “We have a speaker from the Mesozoic Institute of Technology! Welcome welcome!”

to be continued…