Chapter One: The Man Deleted by the World

At 2:17 a.m., Lin Zhou's employee badge stopped working. The turnstile flashed red while he stood before it with a cardboard box in his arms. The box held a seven-year-old mechanical keyboard, two dying succulents, and a mug printed with the words MAKE INTELLIGENCE ACCESSIBLE TO THE WORLD. Across the lobby, a giant display played DeepVault Intelligence's newest advertisement. “MysticDome Medical Model—Redefining the Boundary of Life.” The chief scientist smiled beneath the launch-stage lights. Reporters applauded, and the company's stock climbed in the corner of the screen. Nobody knew that MysticDome's claimed 99.3 percent diagnostic accuracy had been built on 120,000 repeatedly sampled records.