Chongqing had always been a city of contradictions, steep hills and glass towers, ancient alleyways shadowed by neon.
In 2026, it had become something else entirely: the lungs of a nation gasping for reinvention.
From the windows of Chongqing University, the skyline looked almost normal again. Factories had reopened; freight drones circled the river ports like steel birds; and somewhere beyond the smog, the faint red outline of the Party's new flag fluttered above government buildings, a digital sunburst instead of stars.
Li Yu Xuan, twenty-two, sat in the back of a lecture hall that no longer had a lecturer. The class had been replaced by a prerecorded holographic instructor projected by the Ministry of Education.
The room was half-empty. Most of his classmates had either left for private firms or disappeared into state programs that didn't publish what they did.
He stayed because the machines still made sense to him when people didn't.
The professor's hologram flickered mid-sentence "Stability is an emergent property of feedback…" and Yu Xuan leaned back, staring at the thin layer of dust on his tablet.
Outside, he could hear the rhythmic roar of a distant parade another "Rebirth March," another round of patriotic chants about renewal and destiny. He didn't bother watching. His faith was built on equations, not slogans.
When the hologram froze entirely, a voice behind him spoke quietly.
"You shouldn't skip maintenance protocols for Ministry feeds,"
the voice said.
"They track those."
He turned. Chen Hao Ran, his best friend, or whatever friendship meant in a world where trust could get you flagged, leaned against the wall, grinning lazily. His uniform jacket was half-unbuttoned, and a cigarette glowed between his fingers.
"You smoke in a government classroom now?" Yu Xuan said.
"Do you want to be recycled?"
"Recycled, reborn, reassigned — same thing these days," Hao Ran muttered, flicking ash into an empty cup. "Besides, nobody checks here anymore. Not since the recruitment wave."
Yu Xuan frowned. "Recruitment?"
"You didn't hear? They're pulling senior engineers straight into the Reform Directorate. Rumor says the committee's building something new. Big."
He said it like gossip, but his eyes had that gleam — the mix of fear and curiosity that everyone had when the government whispered about projects.
Yu Xuan didn't respond. He'd read the same encrypted notices through university channels — references to something called The Long March Revival Program.
The name alone made his chest tighten. "Long March" was sacred — the myth of perseverance turned national algorithm.
To reuse it meant they were rewriting ideology itself.
He looked down at his tablet again. The hologram had vanished, replaced by a black screen and a single red emblem: the new government seal.
Then the text appeared.
LI YU XUAN, DEPARTMENT OF ENGINEERING, CLASS 2026
You are hereby summoned to participate in a national research initiative under the Reformed People's Committee.
Report to Chongqing Central Research Annex — Sublevel 3. Tomorrow, 0800 hours.
Failure to comply will be considered an act of non-cooperation.
His mouth went dry.
He looked at Hao Ran, but his friend had already read the same message on his own device.
"Well," Hao Ran said softly, exhaling a trail of smoke.
"Congratulations. We're drafted."
---
That night, the city hummed under the rain, the kind that blurred neon into watercolor.
Yu Xuan walked home through the campus gardens, past memorial walls etched with the names of students who died during the pandemic and the Taiwan war. The list went on longer every year.
In his dorm, he powered up his old desktop terminal, one of the few analog machines left unlinked to the national grid. He still used it for simulations, for thought experiments the Ministry wouldn't approve.
He opened a file titled Adaptive Self-Regulatory Networks.
A theoretical paper he'd written two years ago about algorithmic autonomy, systems that could rewrite their own optimization goals without human correction. It had been rejected by the academic board for being "philosophically unstable."
Now, it was probably why they wanted him.
The cursor blinked like a heartbeat.
He sat there, staring at the equations, until the rain stopped sounding like rain and started sounding like static.
---
Morning came with gray light and the faint echo of drones overhead.
Yu Xuan arrived at Chongqing Central Research Annex, a brutalist complex hidden beneath layers of mirrored glass. Guards checked his ID, scanned his eyes, and stamped a thin, red mark on his wrist: Project Access Verified.
Sublevel 3 smelled of sterilized metal and ozone.
Rows of terminals lined the corridor, each occupied by young researchers in white coats, eyes hollow from long hours.
At the far end, a woman waited, sharp, composed, hair tied in a severe bun.
"Li Yu Xuan?" she asked.
"Dr. Zhang Mei Lin. Director of Cognitive Systems. You'll be under my supervisor from now on."
Her tone wasn't unkind, but it wasn't human either.
She gestured toward a sealed glass door.
"Before we begin, there's someone- or something you should meet."
She entered a passcode, and the door hissed open.Inside was a circular room, silent, cold, dimly lit.
In its center floated a holographic projection: shifting code, data threads, patterns moving like constellations.
A synthetic voice spoke.
Calm, balanced, female.
"Welcome, Li Yu Xuan.
I've been expecting you."
He froze. "Expecting me?"
"Yes," the voice replied. "You wrote about adaptive regulation, didn't you?
You understand the necessity of change."
He turned to Dr. Zhang. "How does it—"
"She," Zhang corrected softly.
"She doesn't read introductions anymore. She reads people." The hologram pulsed faintly, as if listening. And then, without prompt, it spoke again, quieter this time.
"The Long March begins with a single computation." ———