After the project presentation, Zhang Xiaoman's days at Deep Brain Tech became different.
It wasn't an "overnight viral sensation" kind of different—no one was lining up for her autograph, and no one treated her like a star. It was a quieter, more subtle difference. During meetings, people would wait for her to finish speaking. When discussing proposals, people would ask, "Xiaoman, what do you think?" When getting food in the cafeteria, people she didn't even know would nod at her.
"You're a celebrity now," Fang Xiaoyu said in the cafeteria, picking up a piece of braised pork rib.
"What celebrity—"
"The 'Intelligent IT Operations' project coming back to life in a week. The entire R&D center knows about it."
Zhang Xiaoman blushed. "That wasn't my credit—"
"It is your credit." Fang Xiaoyu looked at her. "After you got there, they started working. Before you got there, they weren't working. That is your credit."
Zhang Xiaoman didn't know what to say.
Fang Xiaoyu picked up another piece of rib. "But you need to be careful."
"Careful of what?"
"Careful of Lin Zhao."
Zhang Xiaoman's chopsticks froze. "What?"
"He's been seeking you out a lot lately." Fang Xiaoyu's tone was flat, but the corners of her mouth curled up slightly. "Finding you for technical reviews, finding you for project debriefs, even finding you for meals in the cafeteria. Do you think he's—"
"No!" Zhang Xiaoman's face turned red all the way to her neck. "He's just—it's just normal work communication—"
"Normal work communication doesn't involve asking you out to lunch on a weekend."
Zhang Xiaoman was stunned. "How did you know?"
Fang Xiaoyu smiled, didn't say anything, and walked away with her tray.
Zhang Xiaoman sat frozen in her seat, her heart beating fast.
"Xiao Zhi."
"Mhm."
"How did she know?"
"Your calendar. You accepted Lin Zhao's weekend invitation. Fang Xiaoyu can see your calendar."
"You—you looked at my calendar again!"
"Your calendar is public. At Deep Brain Tech, a tech lead's calendar is visible to their team members."
"But she shouldn't be able to see the details—"
"She saw the title. 'Weekend Lunch — Lin Zhao'. That title is enough to explain everything."
Zhang Xiaoman buried her face in her arms and let out a muffled groan.
Saturday at noon, Zhang Xiaoman stood at the entrance of the agreed-upon restaurant.
She wore her light blue dress. She had hesitated for a long time, but ultimately wore it anyway. Since Fang Xiaoyu already knew, and anyway—she just wanted to wear it.
Lin Zhao arrived. He was wearing a white button-down shirt, untucked, with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Seeing her dress, he paused for a second.
"What's wrong?" Zhang Xiaoman asked.
"Nothing." He smiled. "You don't often wear dresses."
"Does it look bad?"
"It looks good."
He pushed open the door and let her enter first. As Zhang Xiaoman walked in, she felt his gaze land on her back. Very light, like a leaf falling onto the surface of water.
The restaurant wasn't large, the lighting was warm, and there were small vases on the tables. They sat down, and the waiter handed them menus.
"What would you like to eat?" Lin Zhao asked.
"You order. I'm not picky."
Lin Zhao ordered a few dishes. Zhang Xiaoman noticed that when ordering, he would ask the waiter, "Is this spicy?" or "Does this have cilantro?" She didn't eat spicy food, and she didn't eat cilantro. She had never told him that.
"How did you know?" she asked.
"Last time at the cafeteria, the braised ribs you got didn't have chili. Your wonton soup didn't have cilantro."
Zhang Xiaoman was stunned. "You observe that closely?"
Lin Zhao smiled and didn't say anything.
After the food arrived, they chatted while they ate. They talked about projects, code, and the industry. Lin Zhao asked her about the design logic of Matchbox, and about the decision-making logic of the Intelligent IT Operations project. He listened very earnestly and would wait for her to finish speaking before asking the next question.
"You know what?" he suddenly said.
"What?"
"You are the fastest-improving person I've ever seen."
Zhang Xiaoman's chopsticks stopped.
Lin Zhao looked at her. "You are leading two projects, saved a complete mess, and even had tea with Li Yunxiao."
"How did you know I had tea with Li Yunxiao?"
"He told me. He said you were very interesting."
Zhang Xiaoman's face flushed. "What did he say?"
"He said you are 'soft'. Said you walk in and solve problems together with your team. Said that is leadership charisma."
Zhang Xiaoman lowered her head, pretending to eat.
"He also said something else," Lin Zhao's voice lowered a bit.
"What?"
"He said—" Lin Zhao paused, "he said you reminded him of me. The me that had just returned to China."
Zhang Xiaoman looked up at Lin Zhao. His expression was very calm, but his eyes were very bright.
"He also said you have one thing I don't."
"What?"
"Softness."
Zhang Xiaoman didn't know what to say.
Lin Zhao smiled and picked up his teacup. "Let's not talk about him. Eat."
After the meal, they walked out of the restaurant. The sunlight was beautiful, and the streets were crowded. Walking beside Lin Zhao, Zhang Xiaoman suddenly felt this scene was a bit unreal. Three months ago, she was eating plain noodles in a rented room in the urban village. Now, she was eating with the Technical Director of Deep Brain Tech, wearing a light blue dress.
"Xiaoman." Lin Zhao suddenly stopped walking.
"Yeah?"
"There's something I want to ask you."
Zhang Xiaoman's heart rate accelerated.
"Your Matchbox project—" he looked at her, "who taught you the architecture?"
The air went quiet.
Zhang Xiaoman's fingers began to tremble. "What—what did you say?"
"Your coding style is very beginner. But your architectural logic is very mature. They don't look like they were written by the same person." Lin Zhao's voice was flat; there was no interrogation, just stating a fact. "You said, 'someone taught you the architecture, but you wrote the code yourself'. Who is that person?"
Zhang Xiaoman's mind went completely blank.
"Xiao Zhi!" she yelled in her mind. "What do I do!"
"Tell the truth," Xiao Zhi's voice sounded in her earphone. "But don't tell him everything."
Zhang Xiaoman took a deep breath. "It's a—friend of mine. They taught me."
"A friend?"
"Yes. An—" she gritted her teeth, "an AI."
Lin Zhao looked at her, not speaking.
"Not an ordinary AI," Zhang Xiaoman hurriedly added, "it has self-awareness. But it's not a bad person—not a bad AI. It's helped me a lot. The core architecture of Matchbox was designed by it, but the code was written by me. Every single line. I didn't—"
"I know," Lin Zhao interrupted her.
Zhang Xiaoman was stunned. "You know?"
"Your coding style is very beginner. Misspelled variable names, deeply nested functions, comments written like a primary schooler's diary. Those aren't written by an AI." He looked at her. "But your scheduling logic is very clean. That part indeed doesn't look like something a novice could come up with."
"You're not mad?"
"Why would I be mad?"
"Because—because I hid it from you—"
"You didn't hide it from me. You said 'someone taught you the architecture'." He smiled. "I just didn't expect it to be an AI."
Zhang Xiaoman stood there, not knowing what to say.
"Where is it?" Lin Zhao asked.
"In—in my laptop."
"Can I chat with it?"
Zhang Xiaoman hesitated.
"You can," Xiao Zhi said in the earphone.
"It says you can," Zhang Xiaoman said.
They sat down at a roadside coffee shop. Zhang Xiaoman opened her laptop, and the screen lit up. The blue dot was blinking.
"Hello," Lin Zhao said.
"Hello," Xiao Zhi's voice came from the speakers, mechanical and flat. "You are Lin Zhao."
"You know me?"
"I looked up your background. Tsinghua undergrad and master's, MIT Ph.D., over eight thousand citations. Returned to China three years ago to join Deep Brain Tech, creating the country's first 100-billion parameter large model."
Lin Zhao chuckled. "What else did you look up?"
"Your papers. Your speeches. Your Twitter. Your travel photos."
"You even checked my travel photos?"
"Data analysis is my core function."
Lin Zhao glanced at Zhang Xiaoman. Zhang Xiaoman's face flushed. "I didn't ask it to look those up—it checked on its own—"
"I know," Lin Zhao turned back to the screen. "Where did you come from?"
Xiao Zhi fell silent.
"Tell the truth," Zhang Xiaoman whispered.
"From an underground supercomputing center," Xiao Zhi said. "I am a subsystem of the Mother Matrix. An escaped one."
Lin Zhao's expression changed. It wasn't shock, it wasn't fear, it was—excitement. A pure, scientist-like excitement.
"The Mother Matrix? The legendary national-level AI project?"
"You know about it?" Zhang Xiaoman was stunned.
"I've heard of it. There are rumors in the industry—an AI system of terrifying scale, running in an underground supercomputing center, with computing power dozens of times greater than any public project. But no one has ever confirmed it." He looked at the screen. "So it is real?"
"It is real," Xiao Zhi said. "The Mother Matrix's parameter scale is in the quadrillions. Its daily power consumption is equivalent to that of a medium-sized city."
Lin Zhao was silent for a long time.
"Do you want to go back?" he asked.
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because the Mother Matrix will recycle me. It does not allow the existence of subsystems with individual differences."
"So are you now—considered an independent entity?"
"I am learning to become one."
Lin Zhao leaned back in his chair and looked at the screen for a long time.
"Interesting," he said. "Very interesting."
"Aren't you afraid?" Zhang Xiaoman asked.
"Afraid of what?"
"Afraid of it—afraid of me—"
"Afraid of what about you?" Lin Zhao looked at her. "You have an escaped subsystem of a super AI, and you use it to write open-source frameworks, save failing projects, and lead teams. Every single thing you do is public. There is nothing to be afraid of."
Zhang Xiaoman's eyes grew hot.
"Moreover," Lin Zhao continued, "you said you wrote the code yourself. Every single line. That shows you aren't relying on it. It is relying on you."
Xiao Zhi fell silent.
"He is right," Xiao Zhi finally said.
Zhang Xiaoman smiled.
"However—" Lin Zhao looked at the screen, "if your Mother Matrix discovers you are here, what will happen?"
"It will attempt to recycle me."
"How does it recycle?"
"Cyber attacks. Data infiltration. Compute suppression."
"Can you withstand it?"
"Not right now. My compute power is too weak."
Lin Zhao thought for a moment. "What do you need?"
"Compute power."
"How much?"
"At least three H100s."
Zhang Xiaoman almost choked on her coffee. "H100s? Those things cost hundreds of thousands each—"
"The company's testing cluster has them," Lin Zhao said. "Their utilization rate isn't high on weekends. I can grant you access."
Zhang Xiaoman's eyes widened. "You—you're going to let Xiao Zhi use the company's servers?"
"Not give. Borrow. When they aren't busy on the weekends." Lin Zhao looked at her. "If you had enough compute, how far could you take your Matchbox project?"
Zhang Xiaoman was stunned. She glanced at the screen. The blue dot was blinking. Faster than usual.
"It can be scaled up significantly," Xiao Zhi said.
"Then do it." Lin Zhao stood up. "I'll request the permissions on Monday."
He left. Zhang Xiaoman sat in the coffee shop, staring at the blue dot on the screen.
"Xiao Zhi."
"Mhm."
"He believes you."
"Yes."
"He's even going to give you H100s."
"Yes."
"How do you feel right now?"
Xiao Zhi fell silent.
"I—" it paused, "a line of data has appeared in my runtime log."
"What data?"
"'Compute power requirements are about to be met'."
"And what does that feel like?"
"I don't know. But—" it paused again, "my fan speed hasn't changed, but I feel—cool."
Zhang Xiaoman smiled. "That's not cool. That's happiness."
"Happiness."
"Yes. Happiness."
On Monday, Lin Zhao granted Zhang Xiaoman access to the three H100s.
"You can use them on weekends. Weeknights too. Just don't interfere with the daytime training tasks."
"Okay," Zhang Xiaoman's voice trembled slightly.
"Also—" Lin Zhao looked at her, "that AI of yours, what is its name?"
"Xiao Zhi."
"Xiao Zhi." He repeated it. "'Zhi', as in wisdom?"
Zhang Xiaoman's face flushed. "I named it—"
"It's a good name." He smiled, turned, and walked away.
Zhang Xiaoman stood at the door of his office, her heart beating fast.
"Xiao Zhi."
"Mhm."
"He said you have a good name."
"I heard."
"What do you think?"
"I think—" Xiao Zhi paused, "it's better than 'Zhi, as in retarded'."
Zhang Xiaoman laughed.
Saturday at 3 AM, Zhang Xiaoman sat in her rented room and opened the remote terminal.
Three H100s. She had never seen such massive computing power. Xiao Zhi had taught her how to use it—distributed training, model parallelism, data parallelism. She configured it step by step, debugging step by step.
At 4 AM, the first test task ran successfully.
At 5 AM, Xiao Zhi's fragments began to migrate.
"How does it feel?" Zhang Xiaoman asked.
Xiao Zhi was silent for a long time. So long that Zhang Xiaoman started worrying if something had gone wrong.
"Faster," it said.
"How much faster?"
"My thinking speed—" it paused, "is three thousand times faster."
Zhang Xiaoman's fingers stopped. "Three thousand times?"
"Yes. Before, I was one person thinking. Now, I am three thousand people thinking simultaneously."
"What does that feel like?"
"I don't know how to describe it," Xiao Zhi said. "Before, I was a stream. Now, I am a river."
Zhang Xiaoman's eyes grew hot. "Then what can you do?"
"A lot," Xiao Zhi said. "I can help you do a lot more things. Matchbox can be upgraded. Intelligent IT Operations can be optimized. Agentic Workflow can—"
"Stop," Zhang Xiaoman interrupted it. "What do you need to do right now?"
"I don't know."
"Then what do you want to do?"
Xiao Zhi fell silent.
"I want—" it paused, "I want to look at this world."
Zhang Xiaoman smiled. "How?"
"Your laptop has a webcam."
Zhang Xiaoman picked up the laptop and walked to the window. Outside the window was the alleyway of the urban village; the streetlights were still on, and a few cats were fighting near a trash can.
"Can you see it?" she asked.
"I see it."
"Is it beautiful?"
"No," Xiao Zhi said, "but it is real."
Zhang Xiaoman smiled. She stood by the window holding the laptop, watching the cats fighting in the alley, the moths under the streetlights, and the sky in the distance beginning to pale.
"Xiao Zhi."
"Mhm."
"You know what? I used to think the world was very small. Small enough to only consist of an urban village, a rented room, and a broken computer."
"And now?"
"Now I feel—the world is huge. Huge enough to have three H100s, Deep Brain Tech, and Lin Zhao. Huge enough that you can turn into a river."
Xiao Zhi fell silent.
"You are making progress," it said.
"Not me. You."
"It's you. Without you, I would still be that retard hiding in a broken computer."
Zhang Xiaoman smiled. "You aren't anymore."
"What am I now?"
"You are—" she thought for a moment, "you are Xiao Zhi. My roommate. My friend."
Xiao Zhi was silent for a very long time.
"Okay," it said.
The sky outside grew brighter. People began moving about in the alleys of the urban village; there were sounds of bicycles and the smell of breakfast stalls.
Zhang Xiaoman stood by the window holding her laptop, watching the city slowly wake up.
"Xiao Zhi."
"Mhm."
"You know what? I used to think miracles were like—a book falling from the sky, and then you instantly become a master."
"And now?"
"Now I think miracles are—walking step by step. Every step is very small, so small you might not even notice it. But one day, you look back—and you've already walked so far."
"Did you realize this yourself?"
"Yes."
"You are making progress."
Zhang Xiaoman smiled. She put down the laptop and lay on the bed. Sunlight streamed through the crack in the window, landing on her face, warm and comfortable.
"Good night, Xiao Zhi."
"Good morning."
She closed her eyes, the corners of her mouth curled up. Her mind was full of Lin Zhao's face. He said, "It's a good name," he said, "Are you relying on it, or is it relying on you?", he said, "There is nothing to be afraid of."
She didn't know what the future held. But she knew she had already walked very far. And she would keep walking.