My Friend Aaron / 我的朋友亚伦

21st August 2026 2026年8月21日

The following is a short story. ***** This one is about my friend, Aaron. I met him at school, and in our first year when we were eleven years old I told him I wanted to be his best friend but he said he already had a best friend. 以下是一篇短篇故事。***** 这个故事是关于我的朋友亚伦的。我在学校认识了他，那是我们十一岁上学的第一年，我告诉他我想成为他最好的朋友，但他却说他已经有最好的朋友了。

He was probably the smartest person in our year, but he didn’t apply himself academically at all. Instead he was always becoming obsessed with things that weren’t anything to do with studying. By the time we were seventeen he was spending all of his evenings playing World of Warcraft, which he was ranked top-sixth in the world at. 他大概是我们那一届最聪明的人，但他根本没把心思放在学业上。相反，他总是沉迷于那些与学习毫无关系的事情。到了十七岁时，他每天晚上都在玩《魔兽世界》，而且他的世界排名曾达到过第六位。

I remember it was top-sixth because we’d made a bet that if he got into the top five I would let him copy my coursework for our final year Physics exam. This wasn’t long after he had tried to convince everyone that he was going to be a professional football player despite being considerably overweight. He had an addictive personality. 我记得是第六名，因为我们打过赌，如果他能进前五，我就让他抄我毕业那年物理考试的作业。那件事发生在他试图说服所有人他要成为一名职业足球运动员之后不久，尽管他当时明显超重。他是一个容易上瘾的人。

When he invariably didn’t get the grades he needed to finish school and everyone from our friendship group went off to university, Aaron stayed behind and sort of just faded into the background of our collective consciousness. He was the person we would speak about at the pub reunions that nobody invited him to. 当他不出所料地没能拿到毕业所需的成绩，而我们朋友圈里的其他人也都去上大学时，亚伦留在了原地，渐渐淡出了我们的集体意识。他成了我们在酒吧聚会时谈论的对象，但没人会邀请他参加。

‘What do you think happened to Aaron?’ someone would ask. ‘Do you remember the time he told us that he was going to become Prime Minister?’ ‘How about when he said he wanted to become a professional quiz show contestant?’ someone else would add. “你们觉得亚伦现在怎么样了？”有人会问。“还记得他告诉我们他要当首相的那次吗？”另一个人会补充道，“还有他说想成为职业竞猜节目选手的那次呢？”

One afternoon during Christmas break we ventured into a pub in the town where we all grew up and Aaron was working behind the bar. He pretended not to see us and we turned around and left in a sheepish hurry. I still cringe about that, especially because I was one of the few people who kept in occasional contact with Aaron. 圣诞假期的一个下午，我们闯进了家乡的一家酒吧，发现亚伦正在吧台后面工作。他假装没看见我们，我们则尴尬地匆匆转身离开。至今想起那件事我仍感到难为情，尤其是因为我是少数几个偶尔还与亚伦保持联系的人之一。

I had a soft spot for him because he had stuck up for me through a period of bullying much earlier on at school. He had slapped one of my bullies so hard that they had to have emergency surgery to reattach their right retina. Aaron got suspended for two weeks for that. For a long time I felt that I owed him. 我对他心存好感，因为在学校更早的一段时期，他曾在我遭受霸凌时挺身而出。他狠狠地扇了其中一个霸凌者一巴掌，导致对方不得不接受紧急手术来修复右眼视网膜。亚伦因此被停学了两周。很长一段时间里，我都觉得欠他一个人情。

Many of my friends studied subjects like Maths, Physics, or Economics and went on to become financial analysts and traders working in the City of London. Ironically it was the sort of thing that Aaron was built for as stock trading is a good fit for someone with an addictive personality: every day is a high-octane day of risk and reward. 我的许多朋友学习数学、物理或经济学，后来成为了在伦敦金融城工作的金融分析师和交易员。讽刺的是，这正是亚伦天生擅长的领域，因为股票交易非常适合那些容易上瘾的人：每一天都是充满风险与回报的高强度博弈。

So naturally, when the unregulated prediction markets came along Aaron was one of the first in line to sign up for an account. Prediction markets were websites where anyone could bet on anything. You could put money on mundane things like the price of oil going up or much more esoteric outcomes like when a video game would get released, or how many “likes” a pop star’s social media post would garner. 因此，当不受监管的预测市场出现时，亚伦自然成了第一批注册账户的人之一。预测市场是一些可以让任何人对任何事情进行下注的网站。你可以把钱押在平凡的事情上，比如油价上涨，也可以押在更深奥的结果上，比如某款电子游戏何时发布，或者某位流行歌星的社交媒体帖子会获得多少个“赞”。

Aaron had spent several years doing bar and waiting work and felt now he was being handed an opening to become rich, all from his bedroom. ***** 亚伦做了几年的酒吧和侍应工作，觉得现在他终于获得了一个致富的机会，而且这一切都可以在他的卧室里完成。*****

I had been working at a startup in London as a programmer, and the company had gone bankrupt so I decided to move home for a few months over the summer to figure out what I was going to do next. I hadn’t texted Aaron for nearly two years but hardly anyone else was around, so I got back in touch with him. 我之前在伦敦的一家初创公司担任程序员，但公司破产了，所以我决定夏天回家住几个月，好好想想下一步该做什么。我已经快两年没给亚伦发过短信了，但身边几乎没别人，于是我重新联系了他。

The first time we met up I suggested we go to a café and when Aaron arrived he asked for just a tap water. ‘I can’t afford a drink here mate,’ he said, ‘I’ve spent all of my wages.’ I pried with a concerned look. 我们第一次见面时，我建议去一家咖啡馆。亚伦到了之后，只要了一杯自来水。“我喝不起这里的饮料，伙计，”他说，“我的工资都花光了。”我带着关切的神情追问起来。

He explained, ‘The past few months have been tough for me. I thought I’d finally get a break and try my hand at the prediction markets.’ ‘Oh.’ I remarked, as consolingly as possible. ‘How much are you in the hole for?’ ‘A few thousand,’ he continued, ‘My dad left me a bit of money and I used basically all of it.’ 他解释道：“过去几个月我过得很艰难。我以为我终于能转运了，就试着去玩了玩预测市场。”“哦。”我尽可能安慰地说道，“你亏了多少？”“几千块，”他继续说，“我爸留给我的一点钱，基本上全被我用光了。”

He was staring at the table. ‘I was really close to winning a lot. I’d had the whole thing mapped out. I had the perfect bet for U.S. interest rates but they wouldn’t let me place it in time. I would have quadrupled my initial investment.’ By now he was looking up and to the side, shaking his head. ‘The whole system is rigged. I’m never giving these platforms another penny.’ 他盯着桌子。“我真的差点就赢了一大笔。我把一切都规划好了。我对美国利率有一个完美的投注方案，但他们没让我及时下单。我本可以把初始投资翻四倍的。”此时他抬头看向一侧，摇着头说，“整个系统都是被操纵的。我再也不会给这些平台一分钱了。”

Soon after that, during a particularly long and balmy August evening walk together in the park, Aaron revealed to me he wanted to set up his own prediction market exchange. ‘It can’t be that hard,’ he said. ‘But I don’t really know what I’m doing. Is that the kind of thing you could do?’ 那之后不久，在一个八月漫长而温暖的傍晚，我们一起在公园散步时，亚伦向我透露他想建立自己的预测市场交易所。“这应该没那么难吧，”他说，“但我真的不知道该怎么做。这是你能做的那种事吗？”

I hesitated about my response because I almost always said no to people who asked me to help them make a website. People never seemed to understand how much time and effort it takes. ‘I mean, I’ve never made an online exchange before, but I know what I’m doing,’ I responded after a few, silent steps. 我犹豫着该如何回答，因为对于那些请我帮忙做网站的人，我几乎总是拒绝。人们似乎永远不明白这需要花费多少时间和精力。“我是说，我以前从没做过在线交易所，但我知道自己在做什么，”在沉默地走了几步后，我回答道。

My pitiful disposition for Aaron hadn’t completely faded after all this time apart and I was feeling charitable. ‘There are a couple of good books I can recommend, and once you’ve read them, I’d be happy to help you with things that I wish I’d known when I was starting out.’ I concluded, ‘And if — when — your exchange is successful, maybe you can take me out for dinner.’ 尽管分开了这么久，我对亚伦的那种怜悯之情并没有完全消失，我感到自己很慷慨。“我可以推荐几本好书，等你读完后，我很乐意帮你解决一些我当初刚起步时希望自己能知道的问题。”我总结道，“而且如果——当——你的交易所成功了，也许你可以请我吃顿晚餐。”

I didn’t actually think he would even build an exchange, let alone it be successful, but I wanted to seed his mind with some encouragement. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Aaron quickly became an industrious and capable amateur programmer. 我其实并不认为他真的会去建立一个交易所，更别提成功了，但我只是想在他的心中播下一些鼓励的种子。不出所料，亚伦很快就变成了一名勤奋且能干的业余程序员。

It was obvious to me that he still had a gambling habit and one of the ways he tried to earn some money to pay for this was by entering programming competitions called “hackathons”. I had told him about hackathons, and we used to get the train into London together to get to them. 我很明显地感觉到他依然有赌博的习惯，而他试图赚钱来支撑这一习惯的方法之一，就是参加被称为“黑客马拉松”的编程比赛。我曾告诉过他关于黑客马拉松的事，我们过去常一起坐火车去伦敦参加这些比赛。

During these 45-minute journeys, the most frequent topic of conversation was the Simulation Hypothesis: that the world we live in is in fact a simulated reality. It was always Aaron who brought this up. ‘Don’t you want to talk about something else?’ I would sigh. I’m not the most well- 在这些45分钟的旅程中，最常谈论的话题是“模拟假说”：即我们生活的世界实际上是一个模拟出来的现实。总是亚伦提起这个话题。“你就不能聊点别的吗？”我会叹气道。我并不是最……