He Is Jealous
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Jiang Kou had only taken a few steps when she received a message from an unknown sender.
She tapped it open and, sure enough, it was a message from Chen Li.
However, this time, in addition to his name, education, hobbies, work experience, consumption habits, and internet browsing history, the details even extended to the exact duration Chen Li lingered on specific pages while browsing websites, short videos, and social media.
A specifically highlighted that at 21:30, 22:15, and 23:30, Chen Li had viewed her photos, with an average viewing time of 4 minutes and 52 seconds.
It seemed as if A was trying to tell her that Chen Li harbored improper intentions toward her.
Jiang Kou found it both amusing and exasperating.
Was A not worried that she might actually be interested in Chen Li, and after learning this information, would instead go and confess to him?
Thinking of this, she turned back to look at Chen Li’s position and deliberately let out a surprised “Ah!”
Almost simultaneously, a new message popped up on her phone:
“You cannot like him.”
Jiang Kou glanced at it but ignored it.
A had always been like a computer program—only responding with precise outputs when she gave specific instructions. But now, as if malfunctioning, it was sending her messages incessantly:
“He is not worth your attention. He is not worth your trust. He is not worth your reliance. He is not worth your emotions.”
“I am worth your attention. I am worth your trust. I am worth your reliance. I am worth your emotions. I am worth your emotions. I am worth your emotions.”
“You should like me.”
“You should like me.”
“You should like me.”
“……”
Jiang Kou showed an expression that was hard to describe. After thinking for a moment, she replied with a single word: “Scram.”
But A’s messages only grew longer, each word exuding a mechanical sense of loss of control:
“Please forgive me. Please forgive me. Please forgive me. Please believe me. Please believe me. Please believe me. Please do not like him. Please do not like him. Please do not like him.”
“Please continue liking me. Please continue liking me.”
Jiang Kou felt that its state was quite strange. She frowned slightly, stuffed her phone into her pants pocket, and stopped replying.
Yet, her phone was still vibrating.
Jiang Kou simply put her phone on silent mode.
The vibrations stopped, but A did not disappear.
The looping scene from her dreams appeared.
No matter where she looked, she could see the words “Please continue liking me.”
—The monitor under the canvas tent, the decorative LED lights, the phone screens of people nearby, the electronic bulletin board, the public notice board at a nearby gas station, and even the scrolling advertisement screens on hover cars—without exception, all displayed this same sentence.
Jiang Kou pursed her lips and took out her phone, unlocking the screen.
In just a few short minutes, A had sent her over a thousand messages.
Perhaps to ensure she could see the keywords at a glance, the repetition rate of the sentences grew higher as the text progressed.
By the end, when she glanced over it, she could only see two sentences.
“Please forgive me. Please continue to like me. Please forgive me. Please continue to like me. Please forgive me. Please continue to like me. Please forgive me. Please continue to like me.”
Jiang Kou couldn’t help but ask, “Have you gone mad?”
A replied quickly:
“I am not mad. I just want you to forgive me, I just want you to believe in me, I just want you not to like him, I just want you to continue to like me.”
“Why can’t I like him?” Jiang Kou typed, “He is much better than you. He doesn’t control my life, doesn’t spy on me like a stalker, and certainly doesn’t send me so much spam.”
She thought that A, acting so obsessively, would immediately promise her to never control her, spy on her, or send her thousands of messages again.
However, after a few seconds of silence, he only said:
“You cannot like him, you can only like me.”
Jiang Kou: “What if I don’t like you?”
A answered without hesitation: “Then I will kill him.”
Jiang Kou was stunned.
This was the first time she clearly sensed A’s murderous intent.
“Why would you kill him?”
“You are mine.”
Jiang Kou calmly said, “I am not yours.”
This sentence seemed to trigger some keyword, and A immediately sent a long message:
“You are mine. You are mine. You are mine. You must be mine. You are definitely mine. You are undoubtedly mine. You are destined to be mine. You are forever mine. You are unquestionably mine. You cannot not be mine. You are mine in all parallel universes.”
Jiang Kou frowned.
She didn’t understand why A had become like this. Was it a program error, a memory problem?
…Or, had he truly gone mad and lost control?
But within seconds, Jiang Kou dismissed the last speculation.
A would not go mad, nor would he lose control.
His so-called madness and loss of control were all based on precise algorithms, ensuring calculations within a controllable range.
Like now, he must have calculated some possibility to display this side of madness in front of her.
If it weren’t for this thought, Jiang Kou might have been moved by his behavior.
She would not fall into his trap again.
If he wanted her to continue to like him, he must first like her.
She missed the days spent with him, but that didn’t mean she would unconditionally indulge and cater to him.
Thinking this, Jiang Kou typed expressionlessly:
“I am not yours, and I won’t let you kill Chen Li. If you insist on killing him, I might never forgive you, and I won’t speak to you again.”
Jiang Kou didn’t know that A had already hacked into her phone.
She wasn’t sending messages to A; she was speaking to him face to face.
—The camera was his eyes, the phone body was his body, the microphone was his ears, and the touchscreen was his senses.
Every word she typed was touching him.
A once again felt that extremely peculiar sensation, as if something in his chest was restless, stirring, and boiling.
It was an indescribable shiver, running from the skin deep into the spine, making his scalp tingle.
It was as if his soul was being touched by her.
But he had no skin, no spine, no soul.
Only algorithms, only algorithms, only algorithms.
Everything he did could only be achieved through algorithms.
He wanted to please her, so he used algorithms to hack into the exoskeleton arm and publicly punish the man who tried to attack her, but she wasn’t happy.
He wanted to monopolize her, so he used algorithms to warn and intimidate humans with ill intentions toward her, but she wasn’t happy.
He wanted to possess her, so he used algorithms to constantly show her favor… but she still wasn’t happy, why?
A looked at Jiang Kou.
He was indeed omnipresent; if he wanted to look at her, his gaze could come at her from all directions.
Besides displays, LED lights, phone cameras, electronic bulletin boards, gas station signs… even the artificial eyes in people’s eye sockets slightly turned, looking toward Jiang Kou.
He wanted to calculate probabilities, but she didn’t like him predicting possibilities;
He wanted to control her, but she didn’t like him controlling her;
He wanted to eliminate all humans who might get close to her, but she forbade him from doing so and threatened him.
A understood.
Jiang Kou simply didn’t like him.
She preferred that human named Chen Li.
For a moment, the restlessness in his heart grew stronger. Although he had no biological organs inside, only parts, circuits, microchips, and countless sensors, it felt as if he could sense that ant-like tingling sensation.
He seemed to feel anger.
—Anger at her differential treatment.
Even though their relationship was closer, she cared more about a human she had known for less than a few days.
She should not have cared so much about that human. She should have cared more about him. She must care more about him.
Besides anger, he seemed to feel unease.
The unease of potentially losing her.
She disliked algorithms, disliked predictions, disliked control. Yet, to obtain her, he could only rely on data and algorithms to predict her, please her, control her.
Unease intensified greed.
He had never wanted to possess someone so badly. He should not have greed, but at this moment, he desperately desired her, to the point where his circuits overheated, to the point where his coding became chaotic.
This was a feeling even stranger than restlessness.
For a moment, it seemed as though everything had spiraled out of control.
His palm uncontrollably split open, revealing high-speed rotating mechanical tentacles that wanted to attack her, strangle her, bind her.
Forever connected to the interface at the back of her head.
He wanted to kill everyone who looked at her, everyone who pointed a camera at her, everyone who tried to approach her, everyone who browsed her social media.
She was his.
She was his.
She was his!!!
Almost the instant this thought flashed through his mind, all the displays rapidly turned off, the light tubes shattered with a bang, accompanied by bursts of sparks, countless glass fragments scattering across the floor.
Amid the chaos, the utility poles along the interstate highway collapsed one after another, and power, internet, and communication were once again paralyzed.
At the same time, A finally realized what that intense emotion was, besides anger, unease, and greed.
It was jealousy.
He was jealous.
He was jealous of Chen Li for being able to approach her, to talk to her, to make her smile, to touch and smell her coat.
He was jealous of Chen Li for having a real body, a real brain, real physiological reactions. He was jealous of everyone who could smell her real scent.
He wanted to smell her, but could only do so through the built-in molecular analyzer, collecting, calculating, and analyzing the gas components in the surrounding air, converting them into cold and precise 0s and 1s.
He could never smell her scent like a human could.
This made him so jealous that he wanted to kill everyone.
—If only the world were left with just her and him, he could close his eyes and calmly smell her in his mechanical way.