Chapter One: The Man Deleted by the World

At five, the first training run collapsed. At six twenty, recursive contamination tore through the knowledge graph. At seven, the hospital called. If the payment did not arrive, Lin Sulan would be transferred to basic palliative care. “Xiao Zhou,” his mother said after taking the phone from the nurse, “don't borrow any more money. I've lived enough. Don't wager your whole future on me.” Lin watched the loss function scroll. “I'm not wagering the future,” he said. “I'm open-sourcing it.” At 9:40 a.m., Firefly completed its first training cycle. It had one two-hundredth of MysticDome's parameters and scored six points higher across public benchmarks.