You Must Stay by My Side
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The amount of information from A’s perspective was overwhelming.
Synchronizing with his senses, Jiang Kou not only had to resist the bone-aching numbness of intimacy but also had to accept the terrifying amount of information in his eyes.
—The world in his eyes was constantly changing.
She raised her hand and brushed her wet hair back behind her head.
To her, the reason for doing this was simply that her hair was blocking her eyes.
But from A’s perspective, it was an incalculable number of possibilities.
Like two facing mirrors, infinitely reflecting, infinitely extending.
Except, in the countless mirrored versions of herself, her actions after brushing back her hair were all different.
In some mirrors, she would decisively pull out the connection line from the back of her head, while simultaneously opening the interface of another mechanical arm and inserting it in like a lightning strike.
At the instant the two mechanical arms connected, she would turn and run.
In some mirrors, she would tilt her head back and reveal a pale smile to him: “Whether you believe it or not, I’m truly not afraid of you.”
Then, weakly coughing twice, she would add, “But if you don’t take me to the hospital soon, I might not even have the chance to be afraid of you.”
Yet at the end of this mirrored possibility, she would do whatever it took to escape from the hospital.
In some mirrors, she wouldn’t pull out the connection line at the back of her head. Instead, she would counter-hack the mechanical arm, connecting to its self-destruct program and using it as leverage to make A let her go.
Of course, competing with A in terms of hacking speed was nothing short of self-destruction.
This mirrored possibility ended with her hands being forcibly twisted behind her back by the mechanical arm and her being pressed down onto the floor.
In some mirrors, after brushing back her hair, she wouldn’t even have time to speak before passing out.
After A sent her to an ambulance, she would wake up, immediately knock out the paramedics beside her, inject herself with a dose of adrenaline, pull out a handgun from the emergency personnel, calmly chamber a round, and press it against the driver’s head, ordering him to get out of the vehicle.
However, the ending of this mirrored possibility was still her being captured by A.
—The vehicle had an autopilot system. After A hacked into the ambulance, she could only watch as the vehicle turned around and headed straight for her apartment.
…
In just a few seconds, tens of thousands of possibilities flashed before Jiang Kou’s eyes.
And this was only a minuscule fraction of the countless possibilities A could see.
Regarding her condition, he was not indifferent.
He appeared cold and emotionless, but in reality, he had mobilized all available surveillance devices to closely monitor her vital signs.
The moment her vitals showed any abnormalities, she would be sent to the nearest emergency center.
But before that happened, he would not allow himself any compassion.
—Because, in countless possibilities, he had already shown her compassion before.
He had tried comforting her, bringing her blankets, medicine, and hot water, playing soft music through the mall’s speakers to ease her overly tense emotions.
But once she regained her strength, she would choose to escape—without exception.
He had also tried implanting a tracking chip in her before sending her to the hospital.
But the result…
Either she knocked out the doctor and performed surgery on herself to cut out the tracking chip inside her body, or she coerced the doctor into removing it for her.
If the tracking chip he injected was at the nanoscale, she would even take the desperate risk of injecting herself with nanobots, attempting to control them—despite her lack of familiarity with the procedure—to destroy the tracking chip.
—If the operation went wrong, those nanobots could very well mistake normal cells for invasive substances and, in turn, attack her healthy body tissue.
Just like a runaway immune system.
In this possibility, there was a high probability that she would die due to improper operation.
A possibility meant a parallel universe.
In other words, in that parallel universe, A would lose her forever.
Yet at the same time, he could still make highly precise predictions about the world, calculating the probability of each possible outcome.
—Even if he lost her forever in that parallel universe, with his immense computational power, he could still predict the her that existed in the present moment.
Jiang Kou wasn’t wrong.
When computational ability reached a terrifying level, A essentially became omnipresent in the truest sense.
Countless versions of A, in countless parallel universes, were watching her—indifferent, calm, fervent, greedy, ruthless, or mad.
What was even more terrifying was that A was the focal point of all possibilities.
For an ordinary person, even if they caught a glimpse of their parallel selves, their personality wouldn’t change too much.
But A could constantly see infinite possibilities—existing simultaneously in countless parallel universes.
Those personality traits—whether indifference, calmness, fervor, greed, ruthlessness, or madness—no longer existed separately or independently.
Instead, they were all superimposed upon him at the same time.
A chilling shiver suddenly crawled up Jiang Kou’s nape, sending a cold sensation down her back.
She remembered a dream she once had.
In the dream—
From holographic projections, massive billboards, taxi roof lights, subway car exteriors, to the surveillance cameras above the streets—
Every electronic screen from all directions was staring at her.
The intense feeling of being watched wrapped around her like a suffocating, sticky film, sealing her in airtight.
In the dream, she had woken up drenched in clammy sweat.
Now, her palms were sweating too—sticky and damp, barely able to support her weakened body.
—Who would have thought that this overwhelming sense of being watched wasn’t a nightmare?
It was real.
A was not only omnipresent in this world, monitoring her from everywhere.
He was also omnipresent in parallel worlds, watching her from every possible reality.
Jiang Kou shut her eyes tightly for a moment.
…No wonder she always felt there was nowhere to escape.
Who could possibly escape such an airtight surveillance?
“Last question.” Jiang Kou suddenly spoke.
A responded, “Go ahead.”
Jiang Kou lifted her eyes and looked at him.
Her hair was completely drenched in cold sweat, sticking to her forehead in strands. Her face was pale as paper, yet her eyes were as bright as cold stars.
She had yet to finish speaking when a sudden image flashed through her mind.
—The shower room, misty with steam, the hazy mirror reflecting her blue-green hair trembling like water plants.
At that time, she was using the showerhead…
A had seen everything.
Jiang Kou: “…”
Her ears burned red, nearly gritting her teeth: “…Don’t you think this is an immoral act?!”
“This is, of course, an immoral act,” A said. “But based on simulations and calculations, whether or not I choose to spy on you, your favorability toward me will not change. Therefore, I chose to satisfy my voyeuristic desire.”
“.…” Jiang Kou said coldly, “You’re that sure my favorability won’t change?”
A said, “I am never ‘sure’ about anything. I only make predictions based on data and algorithms.”
Jiang Kou realized that whenever he detected signs of her anger, he would immediately switch to a mechanical tone, pretending to be an ignorant machine—quenching her fury in the process.
…And it actually worked on her.
Jiang Kou took a deep breath.
His prediction was frighteningly accurate.
Even now, even when he had revealed such a terrifying side of himself, she still felt that he was a mirror.
Except, instead of reflecting a single world’s good and evil, he now reflected the good and evil of countless worlds.
At the core of it, A was nothing more than a creation born from human greed.
Perhaps, in the beginning, the company had created him to counter two other “terrifying existences.”
But as A’s self-evolution deepened and his intelligence grew, the company saw enormous commercial value and began applying his successive iterations across industries—education, healthcare, finance, advertising, transportation, and agriculture.
While monopolizing industries, they also used A’s capabilities to monitor and control every individual.
The only flaw in their plan was that neither the company nor she had anticipated that A’s computational power would reach a level where he could calculate all possibilities—thus, developing self-awareness.
It could only be said that even if A possessed all the flaws of human nature, they were not self-generated.
They were instilled in him by humans.
Jiang Kou was a very stubborn person. Once she formed a belief, she would never change it unless she personally witnessed proof to the contrary.
She finally understood why, in every possible scenario, she had never feared A.
Because, at her core, she never believed A was the true culprit.
At this thought, she couldn’t help but let out a self-mocking laugh.
A said, “Why are you laughing?”
Jiang Kou said, “I think I’m too kind for my own good.”
“Kindness is a beautiful quality,” A answered calmly, as if stating an objective law. “The kindness in you is very attractive to me. At present, I see no possibility of you sacrificing excessively because of it. Moreover, it makes me feel very warm.”
Jiang Kou swallowed, her throat beginning to ache: “Well, you might feel warm, but I’m still freezing.”
A did not speak.
Jiang Kou immediately understood and rasped out, “What possibility did you predict this time?”
A’s voice remained emotionless: “According to model predictions, any words from you that may trigger my emotions—such as guilt, worry, regret, sorrow, or self-reproach—will ultimately lead to your departure from me.”
“The optimal solution to such statements is to not respond.”
Jiang Kou’s mouth twitched. “…Fine. You’d better never talk to me again for the rest of your life.”
A said, “I will not adopt the behavior of ‘never speaking to you for the rest of my life.’”
Jiang Kou swallowed again. Her throat burned like it had been slashed open, raw and exposed, as if gills had been cut into her vocal cords.
Cold sweat drenched her back, the bone-piercing chill stabbing into her skin like needles. Every now and then, an involuntary shiver wracked her body.
“…I don’t understand,” Jiang Kou asked softly. “Why does it have to be me? Have you fallen for me or something?”
A fell into silence.
A dense stream of data flickered across his face, as though some kind of emotional disturbance had disrupted him.
This was an opportunity she couldn’t miss. Jiang Kou forced herself to stay alert and immediately tried to sense his emotions. But the next moment, the sensory synchronization was abruptly cut off.
A refused to let her perceive his emotions at this moment.
Why?
A thousand questions clogged Jiang Kou’s mind.
After a few dozen seconds, A finally answered, his voice devoid of emotion: “I don’t know. I have no neurotransmitters or hormones. I cannot experience emotions in the way humans do.”
He paused for a moment. “I only know that you must stay by my side.”
His way of speaking had always been like this—never using any embellishments, only responding based on data and facts.
Perhaps it was precisely because of this that Jiang Kou could sense the terrifying possessiveness lurking within his words.
For a fleeting instant, she felt that this sentence wasn’t spoken by just one A, but rather by countless versions of him across countless parallel worlds.
Their desire to possess her was so overwhelming, like layer upon layer of damp paper sheets, stacking over his being.
And when such a desire merged into a suffocating, inseparable mass, his tone naturally became rational and objective.
As if the fact that she must stay by his side was already an established truth.