The System Chose the Wrong Man

At 1:17 a.m., only the cold white lights remained awake on the twenty-third floor of StarArc Technology. Lin Mo stared at another collection notice from the bank and drank the last of his instant-noodle broth. His intern stipend was six days away. The debt left by his father's failed business would not wait. He turned his phone facedown and returned to the monitor. Tonight was the closed beta of Oracle, StarArc's next-generation model. The full-time employees were upstairs at a launch party. They had left the tedious stress tests to him. The test page contained a single prompt box. On impulse, Lin typed, “How long can a company survive if it blames every failure on the person with the least power?”