Chapter One: The New Repository

At the bottom of a moving box, Shen Zhou had found the portable drive he had used in college. It contained a directory named `life`. He had no memory of creating it, but its structure was complete and its size was small—perfect for a test. There was no source code inside, only a README and text files sorted by year. He had assumed it was some abandoned diary generator. Then the repository page refreshed, and the README preview opened by itself. The first line read: `Shen Zhou, male, twenty-four, currently residing in Lancheng.` The second read: `August 18, 2026. Ninth day at Celestial Link. At 1:17 a.m., synchronized this repository to Perch.` He looked at the clock in the corner of the screen. 01:17. It turned to 01:18.