Chapter One: At Midnight, the Chips Spoke

At 11:57 p.m., in the cold aisle four floors beneath Skyvault Technologies, Lu Chenzhou heard someone say, “Pump Three will lose pressure in one hundred eighty seconds.” The voice was faint, like metal dust scraping glass. He looked beyond the server rack. There were only blue status lights and the low breath of refrigerated air. “Old Zhou?” No answer came. This was Chenzhou’s last shift. That afternoon, Human Resources had needed six minutes to tell him that the outsourced maintenance team was being eliminated. Skyvault had just won the ninety-billion-yuan Celestial Ladder satellite contract, yet it had chosen to save the wages of a few technicians.