Chapter One: Rejected by an Entire Industry

“Use the cloud.” “Banned.” “Another platform?” “Banned there too.” Tang's grin faded. “Who did you offend?” Chen showed him his bank balance. “Can you build it for this?” “Not enough.” Tang turned the list over and circled several items. “But there's a batch of cards out back, discarded by a mining farm. Their memory is broken in creatively different ways. If you can rewrite the scheduler and stitch together what still works, 3,800. I'll throw in a fire extinguisher.” They worked until four. The rack had once been a storage shelf. Cardboard and cable ties formed the cooling ducts. Eight GPUs stood inside like wounded soldiers. On the first power-up, the circuit breaker tripped. On the second, the motherboard shrieked.