Chapter One: The Internet Waits for Me to Fail

At 8:17 p.m., Lin Mo's own name carried him onto the trending list. A black-and-red HOT label burned beside the tag: #LinMoAIFraud. Rain leaked through the window of his rented room and crawled down a crack in the blistered wall. Sitting in the only folding chair his landlord had not repossessed, Lin Mo watched a three-minute video on his phone. Curator Gu Wenzhou stood in a white gallery. Behind him hung *The Child by the Sea*, the key visual Lin Mo had created for the beverage brand Tides. Gu spoke with restraint—with the disappointed gentleness of a mentor addressing a student who had lost his way. “I asked Lin Mo one question: could he provide a time-lapse of the creative process? He said he could not.”