Chapter 26: Making Acquaintances

"Di Ye, Cfido only supports English IDs. What kind of screen name do you want to pick?"

Di Ye stood behind Ma Huateng, looking at the crude registration page on the computer screen, and said, "Let's just use the pinyin of my name. Let's go with Di Ye."

"The pinyin of your name is quite unique; both are two letters, making it hard for people to tell which one is the surname."

"That's true. Let's change it then. How about LRF? All three letters capitalized, LittleRedFlower, the abbreviation for Xiao Honghua."

Ma Huateng turned his head to look Di Ye up and down, teasing, "Your height and build don't match 'Little Red Flower' at all. Could it be you're trying to disguise yourself as a girl to hook a sugar daddy?"

Di Ye smiled at this and said, "It's to commemorate the good times when I got a little red flower in kindergarten."

Ma Huateng reluctantly accepted this reason. While typing to help him register, he asked, "You haven't used Cfido in Yuncheng?"

Di Ye spread his hands and explained, "My family hasn't installed a landline yet, so I can't get on. But I just earned a sum of money recently, and I plan to set up a Cfido node at home after the Spring Festival."

Ma Huateng felt a sense of kinship, nodded, and said, "I also plan to set up a node at home after the Spring Festival. We can keep in touch often through Cfido then."

The two were chatting when a middle-aged woman carrying a fruit platter pushed open the study door and greeted them with a smile, "Xiao Ye, come have some fruit."

"Thank you, Auntie Huang."

That afternoon, Di Ye used a preemptive approach to create an image of himself as someone with avant-garde thoughts and a maverick personality. Then, using hackers, DY-ZIP, and a few plagiarized articles on Open Source Software as topics, he successfully broke through Ma Huateng's psychological defenses. Ma Huateng deemed him a computer expert worth befriending and, after dinner, brought Di Ye home to get on the Cfido network.

Cfido was not the internet, but a primitive BBS system connected via telephone lines, developed by the American Tom Jennings in 1984, called FidoNet. In 1991, a Taiwanese man named LuoYi set up a Chinese node in Beijing, which later interconnected with several other domestic nodes to form the ChinaFidoNet community, abbreviated as Cfido, known in Chinese as HuiDuoWang.

At the beginning of 1995, there were fewer than 10 Cfido nodes nationwide, with about 100 active users, but the quality was very high. They were either people who had already achieved success in the computer industry, such as QiuBojun, or people who would later become influential figures, such as DingLei, LeiJun, and the Ma Huateng before him.

After Ma Huateng finished registering the account for Di Ye, he pointed to the floppy disks on the computer desk and asked, "Which of your articles do you plan to post first?"

Di Ye picked up the floppy disks, looked at the labels, selected one, and said, "Let's post this one first, 'The Definition of Open Source Software and Related Protocols'. When you post it, please help me note at the beginning that reposting is welcome."

During dinner at ShangriLa that evening, Ma Huateng had heard Di Ye introduce the content of the articles he wrote but hadn't read the text. Now, after opening them, he saw they were bilingual in Chinese and English and was somewhat surprised, asking, "Did you write all of these yourself?"

"Yes, my girlfriend is an English major."

"That explains it."

Ma Huateng didn't notice the ambiguity in Di Ye's words. After reading for a while, he found the article was very long, so he said, "Uploading and downloading data on Cfido is very slow, and it's inconvenient to read articles that are too long. Why not make it a series? I'll help you post a part of it every day; that will attract more attention."

"That works too. Let me tell you the serialization order for these articles..."

Ever since Di Ye decided to pursue a postgraduate degree, he quickly planned a future path: to be a top student, and a legendary super top student at that. To achieve such an accomplishment, he had to have a distinctive banner to attract numerous followers and push him onto a pedestal.

"Open Source" was the banner Di Ye chose.

Open Source would become deeply rooted in people's hearts in the 21st century, having a tremendous impact on the development of computer hardware and software, a trend that could be described as mighty and unstoppable. However, this concept only emerged after 1997 and did not exist in 1995, so Di Ye intended to take the first step and occupy the theoretical high ground.

Ma Huateng was still just an ordinary programmer at this time and knew nothing about the importance of this theory. After uploading parts of "The Definition of Open Source Software and Related Protocols" to Cfido, he enthusiastically began researching DY-ZIP, testing it while asking, "Do you plan to sell this compression software for money, or do you plan to release it as Open Source?"

Although Di Ye had planned a top-student path, he didn't intend to give up on business. After all, as an adult, one wants everything. He said, "I plan to release the source code under the GPL protocol and then sell it as shareware."

Shareware was a distribution method that emerged in the early days of the internet era. It involved embedding a registration mechanism in the software and then distributing it for free, allowing customers to try it for a period. If they felt it was good after the trial, they would pay the author for a registration code. Therefore, in the late 90s and early 21st century, many pirated software programs would come with registration codes or cracking programs.

Ma Huateng was a very realistic person and said, "You've already gone Open Source, and you still want to sell it for money? Others can just copy your source code and use it directly."

"That shouldn't work in Europe and America because the copyright is mine. I plan to earn money from foreigners."

"Theoretically it won't work, but in reality, it might. This kind of behavior is hard to verify, and cross-border lawsuits are also very troublesome."

"I'll leave it to fate. I mainly want to use this compression software to gain some fame; I'm not counting on it to make much money for now."

Di Ye stayed at Ma Huateng's house until past 9 o'clock before saying goodbye and leaving. Once he returned to ShangriLa, he first called Di Yan to report he was safe, chatted with Fangfei on the phone for a few minutes, and then washed up and went to sleep.

The next day was Saturday. Di Ye went to the hotel's fitness center in the morning to play around for a while. He felt his body was a bit weak, not as energetic as when he first transmigrated. After calculating carefully, he realized he hadn't participated in physical exercise for nearly 20 days, far less disciplined than Di Ye. He felt very guilty and vowed that after the Spring Festival, he would find a sport to practice properly.

After returning to the suite and taking a shower, Di Ye changed into a casual outfit and looked at himself in the mirror. He felt his state was good, looking a bit like a playboy, which was very suitable for fooling people. He summoned Xiao Honghua and ordered, "Find Xu Chaobo's contact information, the closer to 1995, the better."

Xiao Honghua answered crisply and kept searching within the Light Screen. Finally, she found a somewhat blurry first-person video. In this video, one could vaguely see a woman in a hospital gown holding a piece of paper, saying, "This is my brother's number in Pengcheng. Call him and borrow some money."

"Will he lend it?"

"If he has money, he definitely will. I'm just afraid he doesn't have any either."

Along with the dialogue, a hand took the paper. The paper slid across the center of the Light Screen, and the blurry handwriting became clear for a moment. Xiao Honghua was quick-eyed and fast-handed, freezing it on the Light Screen.

Di Ye looked at the image in the Light Screen and wondered, "How old was I in this memory?"

"1 month and 7 days old. You were being held in your father's arms at the time."

Di Ye clicked his tongue in wonder and asked, "A baby only a month old has memories?"

"From the moment you were born, everything you saw or heard was saved in the Electronic Watch. It's just that a month-old baby's eyes haven't fully developed, so they can't see things far away clearly, which is why it's so blurry."

"So that's how it is."

Di Ye walked to the suite's telephone, picked up the receiver, looked at the note displayed on the Light Screen, and tried dialing the number. His luck was good; the call connected quickly. A man with a resonant voice said "Hello" and asked, "I am Xu Chaobo. How can I help you?"

"Manager Xu, I heard you can handle overseas StockIndexFutures there?"

"Yes, our company provides futures trading services for stock indices in New York, London, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and other places..."

Di Ye interrupted Xu Chaobo's enthusiastic introduction and said straightforwardly, "Manager Xu, I want to short the Nikkei Index next Monday. Do you work on the weekend? If you do, I hope you can come to ShangriLa, and we can talk in person."

"We provide 24-hour comprehensive service; there's no such thing as a weekend for us. I'll leave now and can be there in about 30 minutes."

"Excellent, I'll wait for you in the lobby lounge."

Di Ye pretended to ask about Xu Chaobo's physical appearance, then walked to the window, enjoying the distant street view while calculating the gains for next Monday.

Next Monday was January 23rd. This day was the Northern Little New Year in China, and also the day the Dongying stock market would take a dive. The Nikkei Index would plummet by 1055 points, a drop of 5.6%.

Di Ye currently had 50,000 earned from selling the IBM internship spot, 180,000 given by Di Yongchang, and 100,000 that Fan Dazhi let him use to buy an MPEG Decompression Card, totaling 330,000. He planned to use 300,000 to short the Nikkei Index. Calculated with 10x leverage, he could theoretically earn about 168,000 yuan.

"After deducting various handling fees and intermediary fees, I estimate I can only earn about 150,000. That's a bit low."

Just then, the phone in the suite rang. It was Ma Huateng calling to say that two friends wanted to meet Di Ye and invited him to lunch at noon. Di Ye asked, "It wouldn't be that classmate of yours who used to work at the Peng City Telecom Data Communication Bureau, would it?"

"That's right, it's him. Also, I have a friend who is a postgraduate student at South China University of Technology; he also wants to meet you."

"Alright, then let's gather at noon."

After Di Ye hung up the phone, his annoyance about earning too little money faded quite a bit. He felt that being able to meet three of the founding employees of Penguin on his first trip to Pengcheng was not a wasted trip.