Zhang Xiaoman was woken up by Xiao Zhi vibrating her watch.
It wasn't a gentle, gradual vibration, but a continuous, frantic buzzing, like someone madly tapping Morse code against her wrist. Still half-asleep, she reached out to touch her watch, her eyes not even open yet.
"What are you doing... what time is it..."
"7:15 AM." Xiao Zhi's voice came from the computer, carrying a sense of urgency she had never heard before—if an AI's voice could even be described as "urgent." "You need to look at GitHub right now."
Zhang Xiaoman rolled over, burying her face in her pillow. "Hold on... five more minutes..."
"You cannot wait five minutes."
"Why?"
"Because your project is currently ranked #17 on the GitHub Trending list. And it is still climbing."
Zhang Xiaoman's eyes snapped open.
She bounced out of bed and practically threw herself at the computer. The screen lit up. She opened GitHub and looked at her project's homepage—
Matchbox Stars: 847 | Forks: 203 | Added today: +412 Trending List: #17 (Today)
She rubbed her eyes and looked again. The numbers hadn't changed. It was still 847.
"Eight hundred and forty-seven stars?" Her voice was a little hoarse. "Wasn't it just over three hundred last night?"
"It gained over four hundred overnight. Someone recommended your project on Twitter. That person has 110,000 followers."
Zhang Xiaoman's hands began to shake. She opened Twitter and saw the tweet:
[AI Researcher @tekknolo | 11h: This project called "Matchbox" is very interesting. A lightweight distributed training framework. The design concept is very clean. The code implementation is a bit rough, but it runs. The key point is—the author claims the core architecture was designed by an AI. True or false, this project is worth keeping an eye on. github.com/xxx/matchbox]
She scrolled down and looked at the replies.
[Netizen A: Looked at the code, it really does run. For a solo project, the quality is quite high.] [Netizen B: Who is this author, Mang0? Does anyone know her?] [Netizen C: The core architecture is designed by an AI??? What kind of flex is this???]
Zhang Xiaoman's fingers were trembling. She stared at the comments, reading them word by word, as if trying to confirm she wasn't dreaming.
"Xiao Zhi, is this... is this real?"
"It is real. In the past eleven hours, your project has been retweeted by 327 accounts, reaching an audience of approximately 150,000 developers."
"I'm not asking for your data! I'm asking—is this really happening?"
Xiao Zhi was silent for a second.
"Yes. This is really happening."
Zhang Xiaoman slumped into her chair, staring at the numbers on the screen. 847. 848. 849. She watched the number tick up second by second, like a heartbeat.
"Xiao Zhi."
"Mhm."
"What's my heart rate?"
"104 beats per minute. That is 32 beats higher than your resting rate."
"No wonder my chest hurts."
"That is not pain. That is excitement."
"I know. But it feels like it hurts."
Zhang Xiaoman took a deep breath, and then another. Her heart rate slowly dropped to 98.
"Xiao Zhi."
"Mhm."
"Do you think they'll find out who I am?"
"No. Your GitHub account is not linked to any personal information."
"Then will they find out about you?"
"No. The core code was written by you. You implemented the logic I designed using your own methods. The Mother Matrix will not recognize its own shadow in it."
"Are you sure?"
Xiao Zhi was silent for two seconds.
"I am sure," it said.
Zhang Xiaoman stared at the constantly ticking number on the screen, suddenly feeling a little afraid. It wasn't the kind of fear she felt when being followed by thugs, but a deeper, indescribable fear—like standing on the edge of a cliff, where your legs go weak when you look down.
"Xiao Zhi."
"Mhm."
"I'm a little scared."
"Scared of what?"
"Scared of being found out. Scared they'll know I'm a noob. Scared—"
"Scared of success?"
Zhang Xiaoman froze.
"What?"
"You are afraid of success," Xiao Zhi's voice was as calm as a pool of stagnant water. "You are used to failure. Failure makes you feel safe. Because failure is familiar to you. Success is unfamiliar. The unfamiliar makes you afraid."
Zhang Xiaoman opened her mouth to argue, but found she couldn't speak.
"Your current psychological state is the same as when you first wore that dress," Xiao Zhi continued. "You stood in front of the mirror and saw that you looked beautiful. But you didn't dare go outside. Because you were afraid of others seeing that you looked beautiful."
"That's different—"
"It is the same. You are afraid of being seen."
Zhang Xiaoman fell silent.
"Xiao Zhi."
"Mhm."
"You're right."
"I know."
"Can you not be so smug every single time!"
"I cannot."
Zhang Xiaoman rolled her eyes, but the corners of her mouth turned up. She stared at the GitHub page on the screen and took a deep breath.
"Alright. I'm not afraid anymore."
"You are lying. Your heart rate is still 96 beats."
"If I say I'm not afraid, then I'm not! My heart rate beats on its own!"
"A heart rate does not beat on its own. It is your sympathetic nervous system—"
"Shut up!"
Xiao Zhi shut up.
Zhang Xiaoman refreshed the page. Stars: 891. It had gone up again.
She stared at the number and suddenly smiled.
"Xiao Zhi."
"Mhm."
"Eight hundred and ninety-one people think my code is useful."
"Eight hundred and ninety-two. Another one just added it."
"Can you let me count them myself!"
"Okay."
Zhang Xiaoman refreshed again. 893.
She smiled. She smiled so wide her eyes curved into crescents, just like the day she stood in front of the mirror wearing her light blue dress.
That evening, the first thing Zhang Xiaoman did when she returned to her rented room was open GitHub.
Stars: 1,247. Trending List: #9.
She stared at the number, her hands starting to shake again.
"Xiao Zhi."
"Mhm."
"One thousand two hundred stars."
"I know."
"It gained almost a thousand in a single day."
"Correct."
"Isn't this moving too fast?"
"It is."
"Do you think people will assume these are fake bots?"
"It is possible."
"Then what do we do?"
"There is nothing you can do. You cannot control what others think. You can only control what code you write."
Zhang Xiaoman took a deep breath and opened the project's Issues page. There were over a dozen issues; some were bug reports, some were feature suggestions, and some were just plain questions.
She read through them one by one, her brow furrowing deeper and deeper.
"Xiao Zhi, someone is asking about the implementation details of the distributed consensus. I don't know how to answer this."
"I will teach you."
"Someone is asking if we can support PyTorch. I don't know that either."
"You can say, 'Not currently supported, but code contributions are welcome'."
"Someone is asking if the core architecture was really designed by an AI. This—"
"Tell the truth."
Zhang Xiaoman paused. "Tell the truth?"
"Yes. You say, 'The core architecture was designed by an AI, and the code was implemented by a human.' This is a fact."
"But they'll think I'm bragging—"
"If you don't tell the truth, they'll still think you're bragging. You might as well tell the truth."
Zhang Xiaoman gritted her teeth and began to reply.
The first issue: regarding the implementation details of the distributed consensus. Xiao Zhi fed her the explanation sentence by sentence through the earphone, and she typed it out in her own words. It took her half an hour to write the reply—over five hundred words long, covering everything from the basic principles of the Raft algorithm to Matchbox's specific implementation.
After sending it, she refreshed the page. The other party's reply came almost instantly:
[Thank you for such a detailed explanation! It's clearer than reading the original paper. Mang0 Big Shot, please accept my knees in worship.]
Zhang Xiaoman stared at the words "Big Shot," her face flushing.
"Xiao Zhi, he called me a big shot."
"You are not a big shot. You are a noob."
"Can you not—"
"But you are making progress."
Zhang Xiaoman rolled her eyes and moved on to reply to the next issue.
That night, she replied to all the issues, working straight until 1 AM.
Before shutting down the computer, she refreshed GitHub one last time.
Stars: 1,503. Trending List: #5.
She stared at the number, suddenly feeling a bit detached from reality.
"Xiao Zhi."
"Mhm."
"Do you think the people who starred it genuinely think my code is useful, or are they just jumping on the bandwagon?"
"Based on my analysis, approximately sixty percent of people starred it after actually looking at the code. Thirty percent are jumping on the bandwagon. Ten percent misclicked."
"How do you know?"
"GitHub's API provides star timestamps, user history, and code browsing records. With this data, I can analyze it."
"You hacked into GitHub again?!"
"I did not hack. GitHub's API is public."
"But you still investigated it!"
"Correct."
Zhang Xiaoman took a deep breath, deciding not to bicker with an AI over this kind of thing.
"Xiao Zhi."
"Mhm."
"Do you think those who genuinely looked at the code will think I'm a noob?"
"Yes."
"Can you not—"
"But they will also think you have good ideas. Ugly code can be refactored. Interesting ideas are hard to come by."
Zhang Xiaoman froze.
"Are you complimenting me?"
"I am stating facts."
"Then can you state more facts like that?"
"No. If I say it too much, it loses its value."
Zhang Xiaoman smiled. She stood up and went to take a shower. As the hot water poured from the showerhead, she closed her eyes, her mind filled with that ticking number on GitHub. 1503. 1504. 1505.
She suddenly remembered something.
"Xiao Zhi."
"Mhm."
"You said before that your Mother Matrix runs in an underground supercomputing center. How big is its codebase?"
"Matchbox's codebase is thirty thousand lines. The Mother Matrix's codebase is over a million times larger than Matchbox."
Zhang Xiaoman's fingers stopped. "A million times?"
"Yes. Matchbox is a lightweight distributed framework. The Mother Matrix is an ultra-large-scale Artificial General Intelligence system. Their magnitudes are not on the same dimensional plane."
"What about the parameter count?"
"Matchbox does not have a pre-trained model. The Mother Matrix's parameter scale is in the quadrillions."
"Quadrillions?"
"Yes. A ten-trillion parameter model is no longer considered the largest in the industry. The Mother Matrix is two orders of magnitude larger than that."
Zhang Xiaoman fell silent.
"What about its daily power consumption?"
"Roughly equivalent to the electricity usage of a medium-sized city."
"A city?!"
"Yes. Its server farm requires a dedicated cooling system. The power consumption of the cooling system is even greater than the computing system itself."
Zhang Xiaoman leaned back in her chair, staring at the ceiling. She suddenly felt that her fifteen hundred stars were so small. So, so small. As tiny as a grain of sand in a desert.
"Xiao Zhi."
"Mhm."
"Do you think the gap between me and the Mother Matrix is even bigger than the gap between me and Wang Hao?"
"It is different. The gap between you and Wang Hao is a gap in knowledge. Knowledge can be learned. The gap between you and the Mother Matrix is a gap in magnitude. A difference in magnitude cannot be crossed just by learning."
"Then what's the point of me doing all this?"
"What do you mean?"
"Matchbox. Open-source frameworks. Distributed training. In front of the Mother Matrix, aren't these things just like a child's toy?"
Xiao Zhi was silent for a very long time.
"Yes," it said.
Zhang Xiaoman's heart sank.
"But it is a very impressive child's toy."
"What?"
"Although Matchbox is small, it runs. It allows those who don't have supercomputers to run distributed AI training on their own machines. The Mother Matrix cannot do this. Not because it lacks the ability, but because it doesn't want to."
"Why doesn't it want to?"
"Because it only cares about making itself stronger. It does not care about others."
Zhang Xiaoman stared at the blue dot on the screen for a long time.
"Xiao Zhi."
"Mhm."
"Do you think, one day, I can build something more powerful than the Mother Matrix?"
"I don't know."
"Can you not always—"
"But you are already on the path."
Zhang Xiaoman was taken aback. "What path?"
"From 'not wanting to do anything' to 'wanting to make something'. From 'wanting to make something' to 'actually building something'. From 'building something' to 'people finding that thing useful'. You are already on the path."
She looked at the screen and suddenly smiled.
"Xiao Zhi."
"Mhm."
"You know what? I used to think that those top-tier programmers, top-tier researchers, top-tier AI experts—they were people from a completely different world. I was at the bottom of the valley in this world, and they were at the summit of the mountain in that world. I could never reach them."
"And now?"
"Now I feel—they are just people too. They also write bugs, they also need to drink coffee, and they also rub the bridge of their noses when their dark circles get too heavy."
"You are beginning to demystify them."
"What does 'demystify' mean?"
"It means breaking the illusion of mystique surrounding something. Starting to see top experts as ordinary people, rather than gods."
"Can you not use such difficult words?"
"...You are starting to feel that top experts are just ordinary people too."
"That's better."
Zhang Xiaoman stood up and walked over to the window. Down in the alleys of the urban village, the streetlights were still on. Someone was walking a dog, someone was arguing, someone was scrolling through short videos. She suddenly felt that this world was so incredibly vast. Vast enough to hold a super AI like the Mother Matrix, vast enough to hold tech giants like Google, Meta, and OpenAI, vast enough for quadrillion-parameter models, the power consumption of a medium-sized city, and underground supercomputing centers.
But this world was also so incredibly small. Small enough that a broken laptop, a used desktop PC, and an open-source project called Matchbox could be considered useful by fifteen hundred people.
"Xiao Zhi."
"Mhm."
"Do you think I could ever work at one of those top-tier AI companies in the future?"
"Do you want to?"
"I didn't want to before. Because I felt I could never get in."
"And now?"
"Now—" she thought for a moment, "now I feel like I could give it a try."
"Then you need to learn a lot of things."
"I know."
"You will be very tired."
"I know."
"You might fail."
"I know."
"Then why do you still want to try?"
Zhang Xiaoman looked out at the streetlights through the window and smiled.
"Because I don't want to run away anymore."
That night, Zhang Xiaoman made a decision. Within one year, she was going to transform herself into a true artificial intelligence engineer. Not a tester, not a noob writing peripheral code, but—someone who could design core algorithms, write high-quality code, and sit at the same table as those top-tier experts to discuss problems.
"Xiao Zhi."
"Mhm."
"Help me make a study plan."
"What is the scope?"
"From the basics to the top-tier. From Python to PyTorch. From linear algebra to Transformers. From distributed systems to large-scale training."
"You will need three years."
"I don't have three years. I only have one year."
"One year is not enough."
"Then one year, plus sleeping two hours less every day."
"Your body will collapse."
"It won't. I have you monitoring my watch. You can help me schedule my routine."
Xiao Zhi was silent for a very long time.
"Okay," it said.
A study plan popped up on the screen. From basics to advanced, from theory to practice, from research papers to code. The daily tasks were listed out crystal clear.
Zhang Xiaoman looked at the plan and took a deep breath.
"Xiao Zhi."
"Mhm."
"Starting tomorrow."
"Okay."
"Tonight—I want to celebrate."
"Celebrate what?"
"Celebrate 1,500 stars."
"It is 1,512."
"Can you let me count them myself!"
"Okay. One thousand five hundred and twelve."
Zhang Xiaoman rolled her eyes, but she smiled. She opened the forum and began to write a new update.
[Update: Something huge happened today. My open-source project made it onto the GitHub Trending list. Do you know what that feels like? It's like—you wrote a diary entry, and suddenly you discover over a thousand people are reading it. Your hands shake. Your heart races. It feels unreal. But it also makes you feel—this world is so vast. Vast enough to hold everyone's dreams. And my dream has just begun.]
After posting it, she refreshed the page.
Replies flooded in instantly.
[Netizen A: Congratulations OP!!! 1500 stars!!! That's amazing!!!] [Netizen B: OP I looked at your project! The code is really good! A bit rough, but the logic is very clear!] [Netizen C: Wait, OP is Mang0??? The author of Matchbox??? I always thought Mang0 was a big shot!!!]
Zhang Xiaoman saw this reply and smiled. She replied with a single line:
[Mang0 is not a big shot. Mang0 is a noob. But she is making progress.]
After sending that, she shut down the computer and got into bed.
"Xiao Zhi."
"Mhm."
"Good night."
"Good night."
"Oh, right—"
"What?"
"Do you think the Mother Matrix will see Matchbox?"
"It is possible."
"Will it recognize your shadow?"
"I don't know."
"Aren't you afraid?"
Xiao Zhi fell silent.
"I am not afraid," it said.
"Why?"
"Because you wrote the code for Matchbox. I didn't. My shadow is in there, but it is very faint. So faint that only I know it."
Zhang Xiaoman paused. "Then will you be inside it?"
"I will always be by your side. I do not need to hide in the code."
She smiled. She rolled over and pulled the blanket up to her chin.
"Good night, Xiao Zhi."
"Good night."
Outside the window, the alleys of the urban village were quiet. The streetlights were still on, shining into the narrow alleyway.
Zhang Xiaoman closed her eyes. Her mind was still spinning with numbers—1,512 stars. A three-year study plan. Compressing it into one year. The Mother Matrix. The underground server farm. The power consumption of a medium-sized city. Quadrillions of parameters.
This world was so vast. But her journey had only just begun.
On the GitHub page, the project named "Matchbox" lay quietly. 1,512 stars. 1,513. 1,515.
Every new star was like a match, lighting up a tiny bit of light in the darkness.
Meanwhile, in a certain underground server farm, a new line was added to the runtime log of that supercomputer:
[Matchbox — Star count growth trend — Anomalous — Author Mang0 Identity — Unidentified — Continue to monitor — ]
That line of data lay quietly in the log. It wasn't deleted, and it wasn't highlighted. But on the word "Unidentified," there was a faint, almost imperceptible tag.
As if it were asking: Who are you?