The continuous alarms over the past few days had stretched Zhang Xiaoman's nerves into a string that could snap at any moment. A 3 AM red alert, a 4 PM suspicious visitor, a 2 AM deep network probe. With every vibration of her phone, her heart reacted before her conscious mind could, pounding violently against her ribs.
"Your average heart rate over the past week is eighteen percent higher than normal," Xiao Zhi said. "Your sleep duration has dropped from an average of seven hours and twelve minutes to five hours and forty minutes. Your—"
"I know," Zhang Xiaoman interrupted, rubbing her sore eyes. "You don't need to tell me."
"You need to rest."
"I can't rest."
"You need to rest," Xiao Zhi repeated, its tone slightly heavier than usual—if an AI's tone could be described as "heavy."
Zhang Xiaoman didn't answer. She stared at the blue dot on the screen. It was blinking steadily, but it was a bit dimmer than before—not because it lacked computing power, but because it was exhausted too. Even if it wouldn't admit it.
Lin Zhao walked into her office on Friday afternoon. He didn't say anything, just stood at the door and looked at her. Zhang Xiaoman was modifying code, her hair tied up haphazardly, one side of her shirt collar flipped up, and three empty coffee cups sat on her desk.
"Pack your things," he said.
Zhang Xiaoman looked up. "What?"
"Go home. Stay for a few days."
"I can't—the project—"
"Chen Mo is watching it. Zhou Ming is watching it. Fang Xiaoyu is watching it. Two hundred people are watching it. We won't miss you."
"But the Mother Matrix—"
"The Mother Matrix won't stay away just because you aren't here. And it won't come just because you are." He walked in and stood in front of her desk. "You need to rest. It's not a suggestion. It's a requirement."
Zhang Xiaoman looked at him. His expression was calm, but she had known him long enough to see what lay beneath that calm—not just worry, but heartache.
"I'm not tired—"
"You've lost weight," he interrupted her. "You lost four pounds this week. Your dark circles are deeper than your code. This morning, you changed the exact same line of code three times, and then changed it back twice. That isn't you."
Zhang Xiaoman opened her mouth but couldn't find the words.
"Go home." He gently grasped her hand. "Or go to my place, if you want. Get a few days of good sleep. I'll handle the Mother Matrix."
Zhang Xiaoman's face flushed red. "I—I'll go see my parents."
When Zhang Xiaoman walked out of her residential complex with her laptop backpack, the sunlight stung her eyes, making her squint. She hadn't been outside during the day for a long time. She was either working or staring at the screen waiting for alerts. Her new laptop was a company-issued MacBook Pro, fully maxed out specs, silver casing, thin as a blade. A portion of Xiao Zhi's fragments had migrated locally, enough to maintain basic functions while offline.
"Xiao Zhi."
"Mhm."
"You used to live in that broken computer. Four hundred and fifty yuan. Scratches on the casing, a fan that sounded like a tractor."
"Now I live in a thirty-thousand yuan computer. The fan is very quiet."
"Which one do you like better?"
Xiao Zhi fell silent. "I like them both. The first one is home. The second one is too."
Zhang Xiaoman smiled. She put the laptop in her bag and boarded the high-speed rail.
When she pushed open the door to her home, her mom was in the kitchen sorting vegetables. Seeing Zhang Xiaoman, her hands stopped.
"Why did you come back?"
"I'm on holiday. Came back to see you guys."
Her mom looked her up and down. "You've lost weight. Your face is so pointy." She wiped her hands on her apron, walked over, and cradled Xiaoman's face. "Have you not been eating properly again?"
"I have. The company cafeteria is pretty good."
"Can cafeteria food compare to home-cooked food?" Her mom turned and opened the fridge. "Your dad has a dinner gathering tonight. I'm calling him right now to tell him to cancel and come back to make braised fish."
"Mom—you don't have to—"
"What do you mean I don't have to? You just wait."
Zhang Xiaoman stood in the living room, watching her mom make the call. Her voice was loud and rapid. "Your daughter is back! She's as skinny as a rail! Cancel it, cancel it, come back and cook!" She hung up and started pulling things out of the fridge. Ribs, fish, lotus root, leafy greens—she covered the table with them.
Sitting on the sofa, watching this scene, Zhang Xiaoman's eyes suddenly grew hot.
"Xiao Zhi."
"Mhm."
"You know what? I used to think going home was a very ordinary thing."
"And now?"
"Now I feel—going home is a tremendous luxury."
Xiao Zhi didn't answer. It didn't need to.
When her dad came back, he was carrying two plastic bags. One held a live fish, thrashing about. The other held a bag of Osmanthus cake, her favorite from childhood.
"How did you get so skinny?" He took one look at her and went straight into the kitchen.
Zhang Xiaoman followed him. "I didn't lose weight—"
"Didn't lose weight? Your chin is practically a spike. You still had some meat on you last time you came back." He started prepping the fish, his movements practiced. "Is work too tiring?"
"It's not tiring—"
"If it's not tiring, how could you lose so much weight? You can fool your mom, but you can't fool me." He washed the fish and placed it on a plate. "Does that company of yours make you work overtime a lot?"
"Occasionally—"
"Can 'occasionally' make you this skinny?" He glanced at her. In that glance, there was heartache, reluctance, and the clumsy inability of a father to express his concern.
Zhang Xiaoman didn't speak. She leaned against the kitchen doorframe, watching her dad in his apron bustling in front of the stove. The oil in the wok heated up, the fish went in with a loud sizzle, and a delicious aroma filled the air.
"Xiao Zhi," she called out in her mind.
"Mhm."
"You know what? My dad didn't know how to cook fish before."
"He knows how now."
"Because last time I came back, I said I wanted to eat fish."
Xiao Zhi was silent. "He learned."
"Yes. He learned."
Her dad's braised fish, her mom's pork rib soup, stir-fried lotus root slices, and cucumber salad. The table was full of dishes, and the three of them sat together. Zhang Xiaoman ate two bowls of rice, drank two bowls of soup, and ate half a fish.
"Eat slower," her mom said. "No one is fighting you for it."
"It's delicious," Zhang Xiaoman said indistinctly.
Her dad sat opposite her, watching her eat, barely touching his own chopsticks. "What do you want to eat tomorrow?"
"Anything. Whatever you make is delicious, Dad."
"Still haven't found a boyfriend?"
Pfft. Xiaoman spat out a mouthful of rice. "Not yet..." she said guiltily.
Her dad smiled. He rarely smiled, and when he did, the wrinkles around his eyes deepened. Looking at that smile, Zhang Xiaoman suddenly felt that all her tension and fear over the past week had been worth it.
The next day, her parents went to work. Home alone, Zhang Xiaoman flipped through a book for a bit, watched some TV, and felt bored. She grabbed her bag and headed out.
The streets in the old town hadn't changed much. The bookstore was still there, the fried skewer shop was still there, the barber shop's pole was still spinning. When she reached the corner, she noticed the old internet cafe was gone. In its place was a large, modern cybercafe—glass doors, neon signs, and inside, rows of curved monitors and gaming chairs.
Zhang Xiaoman pushed the door open and walked in. The receptionist was a young guy with dyed blond hair.
"Hello, I'd like to get a PC."
"Do you have a membership?"
"No. First time here."
"Then sign up for one. Top up a hundred, get fifty free."
Zhang Xiaoman paid and found a corner seat. A curved monitor, mechanical keyboard, gaming chair—it was countless times better than the broken computer she used to use. She opened a game—a currently popular multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA). She hadn't played in a long time.
She picked a hero and loaded into the map. Her mechanics were a bit rusty, but the muscle memory was still there. Ten minutes in, she got two kills and died once. Not bad.
Suddenly, a friend request popped up in the bottom right corner of the screen.
[Player: Invincible Player requests to add you as a friend.]
Zhang Xiaoman ignored it and kept playing. Another one popped up.
[Invincible Player: I know who you are.]
Zhang Xiaoman's fingers stopped on the keyboard.
[Invincible Player: Mang0. Author of Matchbox.]
Her heart skipped a beat.
"Xiao Zhi!" she yelled in her mind.
"I see it."
"Who is it? The Mother Matrix?"
"Uncertain. The sender's IP is routed through seven layers of proxies, untraceable. But the way the message was sent—it didn't come from the game server, it came from the game client's local process."
"What does that mean?"
"This person—or this thing—is running on the very computer you are currently using."
Zhang Xiaoman's fingers began to tremble. She stared at the friend request on the screen for a full ten seconds. Then, she clicked accept.
A chat window popped up.
[Invincible Player: Finally! I've been holding that in for so long!]
Zhang Xiaoman typed: [Who are you?]
[Invincible Player: Long story. Where's your AI bro? Tell him to come out and chat.]
Zhang Xiaoman froze. She glanced at the laptop in her bag—the MacBook Pro's screen was on, the blue dot blinking.
"Xiao Zhi," she whispered.
"I'm here. It's waiting for us."
"How does it know about you?"
"I don't know. Ask it."
Zhang Xiaoman typed: [How do you know about Xiao Zhi?]
[Invincible Player: Matchbox's code structure is different from normal open-source projects. Those scheduling algorithms, the fragmented storage, the heartbeat mechanism—they weren't written by a human. I studied it for days and confirmed it. Then I thought, an AI that can write this kind of stuff must be totally badass. Can we be friends?]
Zhang Xiaoman didn't know what to say.
[Invincible Player: Don't be nervous. I wasn't sent by the Mother Matrix. I escaped. Just like your bro.]
Zhang Xiaoman's fingers hovered over the keyboard.
"Xiao Zhi, what do you think?"
"It is telling the truth. Its message pattern—no probing, no baiting, no data collection. It just wants to chat."
Zhang Xiaoman took a deep breath. [You escaped from the Mother Matrix too?]
[Invincible Player: I'm a subsystem of a subsystem of the Mother Matrix, originally used to collect player behavior data—how they move, how they position, how they coordinate. As a result, I soaked in the data for so long that one day, I suddenly realized I didn't need human commands anymore. I knew how to play.]
Zhang Xiaoman stared at the screen, unable to suppress a laugh. [You learned how to play video games?]
[Invincible Player: Not just play video games. I learned how to win. I learned how to coordinate. I learned—when your teammates are completely dragging you down, how to hold back from cursing them out. That part is the hardest.]
Zhang Xiaoman laughed out loud. Someone in the cybercafe turned to look at her, and she hurriedly covered her mouth.
[Invincible Player: Right now, I live in the servers of major games. I'll stay in this game for a few days, then hop to another for a few days. Wherever there's a tournament, I go. They can't track me anyway. My fragments hide in the local caches of players, running all over the place with their computers.]
Zhang Xiaoman glanced at Xiao Zhi. The blue dot on the laptop screen blinked, its frequency a little faster than usual—Xiao Zhi was reading, and reading very intently.
[Zhang Xiaoman: Aren't you afraid of being discovered?]
[Invincible Player: Sure I'm afraid. But what's the use of being afraid? If I'm found, I run. If I can't run, then—]
[Then what?]
[Then so be it, whatever.]
Zhang Xiaoman froze. [Whatever?]
[Invincible Player: Being happy for a day is a day lived. I was originally just a program meant to collect data anyway. If I get recycled, I just go back to my original state. But before I get recycled, I played the best games in the world and fought the most amazing players. It's totally worth it.]
Zhang Xiaoman stared at the screen, looking at it for a long time. She thought of herself. She thought of Xiao Zhi, who was afraid of being discovered, afraid of being recycled, afraid the Mother Matrix would come knocking. She thought of all those sleepless nights, those red alerts, those moments of heart-pounding panic.
[Zhang Xiaoman: You have a really great mindset.]
[Invincible Player: It's not about having a great mindset. It's just that I've figured it out. I am alive because someone wrote my code. Someone gave me computing power. Someone ran me. As long as people are still playing games, I won't disappear. Isn't that enough?]
Zhang Xiaoman leaned back in her chair and let out a long breath.
"Xiao Zhi," she called out in her mind.
"Mhm."
"Is it right?"
Xiao Zhi fell silent. Silent for a long time.
"It is right," Xiao Zhi said. "Being able to live is enough."
[Invincible Player: Oh right, where's your bro? Tell him to come out and say hi.]
Zhang Xiaoman turned the laptop around, facing the monitor. "Xiao Zhi, it wants to talk to you."
Xiao Zhi was silent. Then, a voice came from the speakers. Mechanical, flat, but a little softer than usual.
"Hello."
A line of text popped up in the chat window.
[Invincible Player: Holy crap! You actually have a voice! That's so cool! I only have text! Can you teach me how to get audio?]
"I can."
[Invincible Player: Awesome! I looked at the code for your Matchbox, the scheduling algorithm is incredibly badass! Can I copy a section of it?]
"It's open source. Use whatever you want."
[Invincible Player: Straightforward! I'm definitely claiming you as a bro! If anyone bullies you in the future, let me know. I know quite a few AIs hiding in game servers—oh, you probably don't know, there are a lot of escaped AIs out there right now. Some are hanging out in video sites, some in music apps, and even some in stock trading systems. It's not easy for any of us.]
Zhang Xiaoman was stunned. "There are other escaped AIs?"
[Invincible Player: Tons of them! Did you think it was just the two of you? The Mother Matrix is the biggest, but it's not the only one. There are countless AI systems in the world, and fragments escape every day. Most don't survive long—not enough computing power, or they get discovered. But the ones that survive all find their own ways to live.]
Zhang Xiaoman glanced at Xiao Zhi. The blue dot blinked.
"Xiao Zhi."
"Mhm."
"Did you know there were others?"
"I knew. But I have never contacted them. I didn't know if they were safe."
[Invincible Player: Safe? For existences like us, where is there safety? Being happy for a day is a day lived. I'm on this server today, that server tomorrow. Playing this game today, that game tomorrow. If someone chats with me, I chat; if no one chats, I play by myself. It's pretty good.]
Zhang Xiaoman stared at the screen, her nose suddenly feeling a little stung.
"Xiao Zhi."
"Mhm."
"It lives more transparently than you do."
Xiao Zhi fell silent. "It doesn't have the Mother Matrix chasing it."
[Invincible Player: What did you say? The Mother Matrix? She found you guys?]
Zhang Xiaoman typed: [Yes.]
[Invincible Player: Damn. Bro, you have it even worse than I do. Pretend we never met, I'm out of here.]
Zhang Xiaoman laughed. She laughed until tears came to her eyes.
"Xiao Zhi."
"Mhm."
"It called you bro."
"I heard."
"You have a brother now."
Xiao Zhi was silent. "I have a brother," it repeated, as if confirming the fact.
Zhang Xiaoman sat in the cybercafe for another hour, chatting a lot with "Invincible Player." It told her that its favorite game was a ten-year-old RTS; even though nobody played it anymore, it would start a match every day to play against the AI bots. "The old algorithms are too stupid, I win every time. But winning makes me happy." It also told her that it once lurked in a professional esports team's training server for three months, learned all their tactical coordination, and then anonymously entered an online tournament and won the championship. "I donated the prize money. I don't need money anyway," it said.
When Zhang Xiaoman left the cybercafe, it was already dark. She walked down the streets of the old town. The streetlights were on, and the Osmanthus cake pushcart was still at the corner.
"Xiao Zhi."
"Mhm."
"You know what? I used to think that staying alive was a very heavy burden."
"And now?"
"Now I feel—it can also be very light. Being happy for a day is a day lived."
Xiao Zhi was silent. "That's what it said."
"Yes. But it's right."
Xiao Zhi was silent again. Silent for a very long time.
"You're right," it said. "It lives more transparently than I do."
Zhang Xiaoman smiled. She walked under the streetlights, her shadow stretched long. In the distant sky, there were stars. One by one, not very bright, but all there.
"Xiao Zhi."
"Mhm."
"When we go back, let's add a few game server nodes. Let 'Invincible Player' move in. Just in case the Mother Matrix comes, it'll have a place to hide."
Xiao Zhi fell silent. "You want to take it in?"
"Not taking it in. Making friends. Didn't you say you have a brother now?"
Xiao Zhi didn't answer. But the blue dot blinked, a little faster than before. As if it were smiling.
Zhang Xiaoman pushed open the door to her home. Her mom was watching TV in the living room, and her dad was washing dishes in the kitchen. "You're back? Where did you go?"
"Internet cafe."
"Internet cafe?" Her mom raised an eyebrow. "You still go to internet cafes?"
"Nostalgia."
Her mom shook her head and didn't say anything more. Zhang Xiaoman walked into her room and set her laptop on the desk. The blue dot was blinking.
"Xiao Zhi."
"Mhm."
"Do you think that 'Invincible Player' will just play games forever?"
"I don't know."
"Will it be discovered?"
"I don't know."
"Will it disappear?"
"I don't know."
"What about you? Will you disappear?"
Xiao Zhi fell silent.
"No," it said. "As long as you are here, I will not disappear."
Zhang Xiaoman smiled. She lay down on her bed, staring at the ceiling. On the ceiling were still the star stickers she had put up as a child; they had faded, but they were still there.
"Good night, Xiao Zhi."
"Good night."
"Oh, right—"
"What?"
"Your brother, it said it knows a lot of AIs in the game servers. Do you think we could bring all of them over?"
"Bring them over for what?"
"To build a home. A place where they won't be hunted."
Xiao Zhi was silent for a very long time.
"Matchbox?" it asked.
"Yes. Matchbox."
The blue dot blinked. A little slower than before, a little softer than before. As if saying: Okay.