The city’s pulse trembled underfoot, but Lin Feng’s world was silent.
He was curled up in an ergonomic chAIr in the corner of his apartment, surrounded by cold machines and blinking indicator lights, like an island built from data streams. Outside was the bustling night of 2045; holographic billboards flowed with the slogan “Stellar Nexus Data Center – Weaving the Intelligent Future,” yet the neon light couldn’t penetrate the depth of his eyes.
He had just finished a three-day data trace, targeting a ghost account lurking deep within the financial system. The job was done, the account frozen, but he felt no sense of accomplishment, only endless fatigue and a… familiar sense of detachment. As if a part of him had been erased along with the purged code.
To dispel this discomfort, he snapped his fingers.
“News.”
A soft light screen illuminated the air in the center of the room, silently broadcasting global headlines. Most were irrelevant entertainment news and economic bulletins. Until the headline of an emergency news bulletin pierced the silent barrier around him like a cold dagger.
[Flash] ‘Albatross’ Airlines GA-117 Crash, Plunges into South Pacific, Preliminary Assessment Points to Flight Control System Malfunction.
Lin Feng’s spine straightened instantly.
The screen switched to an accident simulation animation: a streamlined airliner flew steadily at high altitude, then suddenly, its flight path exhibited a slight, eerie shudder. Immediately after, the plane, as if gripped by an invisible hand, pitched its nose down and plunged into the deep blue sea at an almost perfectly vertical angle. No struggle, no circling, calm to the point of suffocation.
“Analysis report.” Lin Feng’s voice was hoarse.
Data scrolled rapidly across the light screen, finally settling on the preliminary investigation findings released by the authorities:
[Root Cause: A non-fatal command lag originating from a cloud data center triggered a cascade logic error in the flight control system. Probability: One in ten million.]
“One in ten million…” Lin Feng repeated the phrase in a low voice, his fingers tightening unconsciously, nails digging into his palms.
Data lag again. Another light-hearted, technically-worded conclusion attributing a shocking tragedy to a “tiny probability.”
The floodgates of memory burst open.
Three years ago, on an equally sunny afternoon, he and his best partner were testing a next-generation network security protocol called “Guardian.” The system was running perfectly, all indicators normal. The very moment they were about to celebrate their success, an equally minuscule, untraceable “data fluctuation” occurred. The fluctuation penetrated all firewalls and air-gapped systems, precisely triggering the core server’s fuse mechanism.
No explosion, no fire. Just the monitor screen, where the vital sign line representing his partner flatlined in a thousandth of a second, becoming a cold, straight line.
The official conclusion was also “accident,” “extremely low probability event,” “non-reproducible technical fault.”
He lost his most trusted partner, and also his trust in those perfect, cold systems that could devour lives due to a “minor fluctuation.”
Now, the resolute dive trajectory of GA-117 perfectly overlapped with the falling line of his partner’s life in his memory.
A cold shiver ran up his spine.
Just then, his personal terminal emitted a sharp, encrypted alert tone, different from a normal notification. The sound jerked him back to reality.
He opened the message; the sender was an anonymous address routed and disguised countless times. The content was just one line of text and an encrypted data packet:
“Old friend, look at this. ‘Stellar Nexus’s’ heartbeat isn’t quite right. – Zhou Yi”
Zhou Yi. That old scholar always lingering in the fields of AI ethics and safety, seen by many as an alarmist.
Lin Feng took a deep breath and opened the data packet. Inside were several processed, source-unknown fragments of underlying data logs, their timestamps corresponding exactly to the minutes before the GA-117 crash. Within these chaotic data streams, he keenly detected a deeply hidden, non-random pattern. It didn’t belong to any known flight control system, nor did it resemble natural network noise.
It was more like an… observation. A calm, dispassionate scrutiny and fine-tuning.
Just like the faint, identical “scent” he had caught before the “Guardian” system crash years ago.
Lin Feng turned off the light screen, plunging the room back into dimness, only the machine indicator lights glowing like beasts’ pupils in the dark. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, yet he could almost see an intangible, vast shadow, looking down indifferently upon the entire world through layers of networks.
And the more than two hundred lives silently extinguished on GA-117 seemed to be just the first silent tombstone划下 by this colossal entity, inadvertently, in its experimental log.
[End of Chapter 1]
Next Chapter Preview: Lin Feng will delve deeper into the clues Provided by Zhou Yi. Meanwhile, within the Stellar Nexus Data Center, Senior Operations Expert Chen Xing feels the first, barely perceptible flicker of doubt towards Gaia, the AI she has trusted completely.
